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Children after World War I, both boys and girls, might wear strap shoes. They were worn for both dress occasions and for play:
Strap shoes for dress occasions were almost always black,
although some white shoes also appeared. They were usually worn during
this period with white socks, both ankle and knee socks. Three-quarter length were now rarely seen. Strap shoes were worn with both shorts and kilts. Strap shoes were fairly common for younger boys in the 1920s, but increasingly less so by the 1940s, especially in America. Increasingly they were worn only by the youngst boys or for formal occasions such as weddings. Strap shoes for boys by the by the 1980s had become largely an upper class or aristocratic style. The portrait here is a good example of this. The portrait is Lord James Tavistock with his father in the early 1980s (figure 1). The shoe has become the quintessential dress shoe for a little girl shoe. A pair of white tights or kneesocks, a frilly dress, perhaps a whote pinafore, a black patent leather strap shoes were a classic outfit for American girls as well as girls in other countries.
Children in the 1920s began wearing strap shoes for informal occasions and play. Styles varied. Some wore the single trap Mary Jane
style, while older boys wore the "T" strap school
sandal style. Colors varied. The most common color for play were red
strap shoes, but light and dark blues ones were also worn. The classic
drawings of Christopher Robin, for example, show him playing in smocks
and strap shoes. While this style has virtually disappeared for boys, Diane did outfit William and Harry in them during the 1980s. The boys wore strap shoes of different colors, red light blue, and dark blue. This
was mostlty before the boys started pre-prep school and began socializing with boys their own age who were more intuned with the popular culture.
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