Figure 1.-- A McCalls patterns from 1943 was issued for a boys' shirt and button-on shorts which could be made in different styles. The pattern here is made in size 4, I am not sure what the actul size range was. |
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American mail order catalogs offer a very useful time line on changing fashion trends. American mail order catalogs in 1943 still featured many of the styles of the 1930s. Knickers were still worn, but declining in popularity. Long pants were becoming increasingly common. Younger boys still wore short pants, especially in the summer. A McCalls patterns from 1943 was issued for a boys' shirt and button-on shorts which could be made in different styles. Sears and Wards still had a range of long stockings and Eton collars, but they were becoming increasingly less common.
A McCalls patterns from 1943 was issued for a boys' shirt and button-on shorts which could be made in different styles with different materials. The shirts could be either play shirts or dress shirts. They could be made with either short or long sleeves. The pattern here is made in size 4, I am not sure what the actul size range was (figure 1). We notice Eton collars still pictured in Sears ads, but we are not sure they were still offered for sale,
We notice a boy wearing an Eton collar in a Sears catalog offering Pilgrim long stockings. Both garments were rapidly going out of fashion in 1943. I'm not sure if Sears was still offering Eton collars. This was another garment that we notice in the 1930s before the War, but much less common after the War. The only Eton collrs we notice to any extent by 1943 were those worn by small boys with Eton suits.
We notice American boys wearing short and long trousers. Knickers were still available, but rapidly going out of style. Knickers were stll quite common before the War, but during the War rapidly wnt out of style. Long pants were becoming increasingly common. Younger boys still wore short pants, especially in the summer. A McCalls patterns from 1943 was issued for a boys' shirt and button-on shorts which could be made in different styles with different materials. The pattern here is made in size 4, I am not sure what the actul size range was (figure 1).
We notice most boys wearing ankle socks and to a much lesser extet kneesocks. Long stockings were still available, but rapidly going out of style. They seem to have been mostly worn by girls, but younger boys did wear them. A factor here that knickers were rapidly going out of style. Some older boys may have worn worn long stockings with knicker suits when dressing up. But this was an increasingly smaller number of boys by 1943.
Sears used the same basic photograph of models to llustrate long stockings in several catalogs. The illustration was first used for long stockings in its Fall-Winter 1942-43 catalog again in its Spring-Summer 1943 catalog.This shows a sitting boy with a toy airplane and an unworn pair of long stockings on the left. The image is from the 1943 Spring and Summer catalog, p. 132, and represents a modification of an image that had appeared in the previous Fall and Winter catalog (p. 282C). The boy dressed in a "T" shirt and short pants seems more approprriate for the Sprng-Summer catalog.
We notice a boy wearing an Eton collar in the Sears Fall Winter 1943-44 catalog offering Pilgrim long stockings. Both garments were rapidly going out of fashion in 1943. I'm not sure if Sears was still offering Eton collars. This was another garment that we notice in the 1930s before the War, but much less common after the War. The only long stockings we notice to any extent by 1945 were those worn by small boys and to a greater extent girls. We believe that they were worn in thelate 1940s by children in the northern states as part of winterwear. We know girls wore them, we are less sure about boys as they were mostly wearing long pants.
Wards in their Fall and Winter catalog for 1943-44 advertised a surprising array of long stockings for boys and girls, aged 3 to 10, in conjunction with anklets in several different colors. The variety of styles at the height of World War II just before long stockings for children almost totally died out in the United States is somewhat unexpected, especially since the same catalog totally omits hose supporters and garter waists, the garments that would be necessary to hold such stockings in place. The wartime shortage of elastic may account for the absence of garters and garter waists in 1943-44 although hose supporters for women and elastic suspenders for men were readily available at the time, so the evidence of how prevalent long stockings were for children seems somewhat contradictory.
Suspenders were still widely worn in the 1940s. We note various grades of suspenders included with hose supporters on a Wards page.
Children by the 1940s were wearing pajamas. We no longer see night shirts for boys. Wards offered warm cold-weather childrens robes. The same styles were offered for boys and girls.
The last time stocking supporters were worn to any extent was the 1940s, although they did not disappear entirely until the early 1950s. They were still prominently advertised in the 1940s, especoally the early 1940s. They were available in quite a wide range of different types. Most Wards and Sears in 1943 had quite a range of offerings. The photographic record suggests that they were rapidly declinng in popularity. Advertisements for stocking supporters , however, show that they were still being marketed. We suspect that sales by 1943 were mostly for girls, but we can not yet confirm this.
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