Figure 2.--This advertisement for long stockings appeared in Sears catalogs during the Fall and Winter 1943-44 and was reprinted Fall and Winter 1944-45. Note that the boy wears an Eton collar, I would have thought this was a 1930s ad. Besides the date on the Sears catalog, the air plane the boy hold help to date the photograph to the 1940s as does the use of Rayon. Probably the photo was taken a few years before appearing in the catalog.

I had thought that long stockings had largely disappeared in the 1930s. Mailo orde catalogs (Sears and Wards) through the 1940s, however, show that long stockings and hose supporters were still being sold in the early 1940s War years. We note pages with displays of some prminance, After the War in the late 40s the poularity of long stockings appears to rapidly decline. We note that long stockings and hose supporters for them were still offered for sale in the Sears catalogs for 1946-47 and 1947-48. Wards also appeares to have handled long stockings, apparently through 1950 or 51.

Clothing

I am not sure how boys wore long stockings in the late 1940s. I think it was ot very common for boys to wear them--especially with short pants.

Popularity

I am not sure who was wearing long stockings in the 1940s. I was a boy then, albeit only 7 in 1949. I never saw a boy wearing long stockings wher I grewcup in Washington, DC. Perhaps they were more common further north or with a different social set. It is possible that boys wore them in northern states. It is also possible that a few boys may have worn them with long pants and I did not notice. I also do not recall girls wearing them, but am not as positive about this. It is likely that most of the long stockings sold in the late 40s were or girls.

Catalog Trends

A few long stocking ads appeared in the 1946 catalogs but only girls are shown wearing them. In addition, the choices are significantly reduced, which must mean that children's long stockings had stopped selling well. In the Fall and Winter 1946 catalog, we find an advertisement for garter waists with both girl and boy models (p. 801)--a less than prominent ad, by the way-- but after this, no boys are shown wearing garter waists and these garments are no longer being given much advertising prominence for either boys or girls.

Assessment

I think the conclusion is fairly clear. Both boys and girls in some numbers in America wore long stockings during the period from 1943 to 1945, and in fact boy models are quite prominent during this brief period (during the war). But after 1945 the style was mostly for girls only, and by 1947 childrens' long stockings in America had virtually disappeared in favor of either ankle socks or knee-length socks for both genders. Tights had not yet become a standard children's product.

Just how common long stockings were is a mater of some conjecture. HBC see little evidence of children, especially boys, wearing long stockings in the post-War era. Here are primary reason for this conclusion is the lack of photographs showing boys wearing long stockings. A HBC reader believes that long stockings may have been more common than suggested by HBC. He weites, "What I find slightly surprising is that there seems to have been a resurgence in the popularity of long stockings for both boys and girls in America from about 1935 to 1945 and then an almost instantaneous shift away from them. I deduce this from the prominence of advertisements for both long stockings and the hose supporters required to be worn with them in both the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs from 1935 to 1945. It is also notable that boy models are shown for both products during this period and, for the hose supporters, boys are somewhat favored as models over girls. In various places HBC suggests that the popularity of long stockings for boys declined during the 1920s as short pants began to replace knee pants and that this decline continued during the 1930s as knickers became the standard wear for nearly all boys but the very young. I don't dispute this claim at all. But it is also clear from the notable surge in advertising that a minority of boys still wore long stockings with either shorts or knickers during the 1930s and early 1940s; and from about 1937 to 1943 the wearing of long stockings with short pants seems to have made a brief come-back only to disappear almost completely thereafter. I have no idea why this happened unless European influences as a result of the War had some effect. In both Germany and Japan, boys continued to wear long stockings with short pants throughout the War and afterwards, although in the late 1950s the long stockings were often replaced by tights. HBC suggests (I think mistakenly) that boys may have worn long stockings under long trousers (as certainly appened sometimes in Germany) but that the advertisers showed images of boys in shorts and long stockings as a more effective way to display the stockings. Sears is, and was, a very style-sensitive retailer and would not, in my opinion, have showed boys wearing stockings with shorts if buyers were not adopting this practice. They seem even to have been promoting it as a fashionable way to dress boys even if the boys themselves might not like it very much. In my experience, most boys from the colder climates who had graduated to long trousers in the late 1930s and 1940s wore long underwear (usually union suits) rather than long stockings. Why have to fuss with garters and waists when ordinary long underwear would offer the same protection with less bother and more conveniently? I think the American boys who wore long stockings during this period did so because their mothers believed in their sons continuing to wear short pants and wanted their sons not only to have protected knees but also to present a more formal and dressy appearance. The boys who wore long stockings with knickers--even with knickers that fastened below the knee--were dressed by mothers who wanted their sons to wear plain-colored stockings that stayed up rather than the alternative patterned, more sporty-looking knee socks that were always falling down."

Stocking Supporters

The last time I saw stocking supporters advertised was the mid to late 1940s, even so they were quite a wide range of different types of stocking supporters available. Many were clearly targeted for younger children.

Personal Experiences

HBC has collected the following accounts of the personal experiences American boys had with long stockings or family portraits during the post-World War II era. Here geography and ethnicity were factors.

Maine boy

An American reader reports, "In the late 1940s and early 50s, little boys were still wearing long brown stockings. I know from experience. Hand-me downs were prevalent in my family due to economics. There are also `baby' pictures in the family album that show both my brother and I in long white stockings, about late-1946 or early-47."

Slovak-American boys

A HBC reader sent us this family photograph. We can not yet confrm it, but it looks to be a Slovak-American portrait at a family gathering. It looks like the anniversry of the family pareiarchs seated in the center surrounded by their extended family. We would date the photograph to the late 1940s to us, but we are not positive. The clothing looks American to us, except for the long stockings the boys are wearing. American boys did wear long stockings in the 1930s, but it was much less common in the 1940s, especially after World War II.

Created: January 10, 2000
Last updated: 6:56 PM 5/6/2006