Figure 1.--The gingham smock on the left (964182) was for boys and girls and was a school smock. Note the back bow. The smock on the right (964188) was just for girls, but I am not sure that it was for school wear.

Most of our images of French schoolsmocks are front views. We know that for boys of school age by the 1950s, school smocks did not have back tieing bows, but rather a waist band that buttoned in the back. We do not know when this diferentiation began. We have seen 19th century images with boys smocks that tied in the back. We are not yet sure what the convention was for boys' smocks during the 1920s and the rest of the inter-war period. We believe that the 1920s and early 1930s the back buttoning smocks were styled the same for both boys and girls, but are still working on this subject. Here we are not talking about nursery schools. We have noted smocks for boys in nursery school even in the 1960s with back tieing bows. Rather what we are not yet sure about is how the back of school-age boys were secured on the 1920s.