Figure 1.--Here we see a European poscard showing a boy wearing striped stockings. It would have been made about 1910. We are not sure anout the country, although the logo should help identify it. The card was being sold in the Netherlands. Basically striped stockings were a 19th century style. We are unsure about the stockings here here.

Here we see a European poscard showing a boy wearing what looks like striped long stockings. It would have been made about 1910. We are not sure anout the country, although the logo should help identify it. The card was being sold in the Netherlands. Basically striped stockings were a 19th century style. We are unsure about the stockings here here.

Chronology

It would have been made about 1910. The sailor suit style and the coloring of the postcard tell us that this is a hand-painted post card. We would guess the early 1910s before World War I.

Country

We are not sure anout the country. We would guess France or the Netherlands, but the logo should help identify it. Hopefully a reader knowledgeable about postcards will help us here. The card was being sold in the Netherlands.

Postcard

Postcards were printed in great numbers during the early 20th century. They are a useful source of both fashion and social trends, but they were made commercially and are thus not images of clothes atually worn by children like portraits and snapshots. That does not mean that all the children are wearing costumes. Many were pgotographed in actual close, perhaps with afitioins like lace and bows. Here we are never precisely sure. The boy here we believe is wearing an actual sailor suit. What we are unsure about is the stockings. He may have been solid-colored stickings and the colored bands added in the studio. Here we are unsure. If tghey are painted on, the studio certainly went to a lot of trouble.

Striped Stockings

Here we see a European poscard showing a boy wearing what looks like striped long stockings. Basically striped stockings were a 19th century style. We are unsure about the stockings here here. A reader writes, "Do you think it is possible that this boy is wearing solid color long stockings (brown) with striped knee socks over them? I have never seen striped long stockings that are striped only below the knee in Europe. Or could this be an early European example of combination stockings such as were ma manufactured in America for a short time (1939-41). I note examples from both Sears and Wards.