Figure 1.--Here Princess Mary is with her two sons George and Gerald. The portrait looks to have been taken in 1925.

The boys were very smartly dressed as boys, often in identical outfits. I have only two images, but in both the boys who were very close in age were dressed identically. We note that Princess Mary liked dressing the boy identically, although this was not possible when Gerald was just a baby.

Younger Years

The boys when they were younger (3-6 years), wore blouses with big ruffled collars. There were several outfits with fancy blouses. When older they wore their blouses rather incongrously with a tie. With this outfit they wore white ankle socks and strap shoes. Another type of outfit worn when young were one-piece shorts suits with both romper puffed and regular pants. We also notice them wearing smocks. They also wore kneepants rather than short pants when young for official portraits. This shows that kneepants were still worn in the early 1920s, although rapidly being replaved by the more popular short pants. They usually wore white thre-quater length or ankle socks. I have not noted them in white kneesocks. The available images show blavk strap shoes. They may have worn colored strap shoes, probably red, for play.

Older Years

As older boys, probably after they began preparatory school at about 8 years of age, the boys began to wear different clothes. They wore short pants suits and kneesocks. In their prep school uniforms they look very much like the average British school boys of the day rather than fancily dressed young royals as they did as younger boys. They also wore kilts, but only for special occasions.

Created: October 20, 2003
Last updated: 7:27 PM 7/25/2008