Figure 1.-- This CDV portrait of an American boy and girl shows both children wearing striped long stockings. The patterns are different, but we are not sure if these were gender conventions. The CDV is undated, but we would wstimate that it was taken in the 1870s. The studio was Kirk in Newark, New Jersey. This was negative No. 47044.

We are still assessing gender conventions associated with striped stockings. We at first thought the striped stockings were primarily a boys' style, but as we expand our HBC archive we have also noticed many girls wearing striped stockings as well. In fact, as far as we can tell tghey seem to be as common with girls as with boys. We have come to the conclusion that there was no clear gender conventions associated with these striped stockings. They seem to have been essentially a children's style. We wonder if there were gender conventions associated with either colors or the striping pattern. Here we are just begginning to make an assessment. We suspect thatv there were color differences, but We are unable to assess color given the black-and-white photography of the day. HBC believes that girls did not as commonly wear the bolder striped patterns, but this is just a preliminary assessment at this time. And we are not sure if there were country differences. Our archive is primarily American. We are less sure about Europe. We do see girls wearing striped stockings in Europe, but given our limoted rchive for many countries, we are unable to make any assessments. We do have several German images and we do see girls wearing strioed stockings. We are unsure how common this was.