Figure 1.--A mail order company in 1962 offered a variety of school smocks, all front buttoning for both boys and girls. Blue was the dominant color for boys, but there were other colors as well. Many were apparently made with polyester as "nylon" appears several times on the page. I'm not sure which catalog this was. |
French mail order catalogs offer a very useful time line on changing fashion trends. French mail order catalogs show a major shift in French boys' clothing in the 1960s. Boys still commonly wore short pants in the 1960s, but increasingly as casual clothes. Older boys no longer dressed up in short pants, but a few private schools still had short pants uniforms. Jeans had become very popular among French boys. Major changes fllowed the Paris school riots in 1968.
We have some information on the 1960s that can not be prescisely dated. We will archive the items that can not be dated on this page. We have noted, for example, safari shorts sets.
We have some information on coats and school smocks from the 1961 Catalog au Louvre.
A mail order company offered a variety of school smocks, all front buttoning for both boys and girls. French magazines in 1962 pictured children wearing classically styled coats called "manteau baby".
HBC notes that rompers were declining in popularity and were being worn by increasingly younger boys. A popular style replacing rompers was the "costume baby" with the English word baby describing a style that would be worn by older boys than the word suggests.
Major changes fllowed the Paris school riots in 1968. We noticed school smocks and small noys' coats in a Galeries Lafayette catalog
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