Figure 1.--Some boys at this Czech school wore stripped long stockings in 1897. I think these were home knitted.

Patterned stockings appear to have been popular from the 1860s through the 80s. HBC has not noted boys wearing patterned stockings after the turn of the century. I do not have details on this, but is my general impression from a review of available images. There are a variety of factors affecting the chronology. One, advances in weaving allowing multiple-colored yarn to be machine woven. Two, the increasing tendency of boys after the 1850s to be dressed in knee pants (otherwise wearing patterned stockings would be senseless). Currently HBC's efforts to develop a chronology of patterned stockings is limited by the fact that we still have relatively few images and most of the images that we do have are not dated. This topic needs to be researched in dated clothing catalogs. We notice a French boy in the 1880s wearing stripped stockings. There may well be differences among countries. Home knitting may introduce more variery in the chronological pattern than the trends from commercial mills.