Figure 1.--We do begin to see knickers being marketed as sporty outfits in the 1920s. These knickers did not have the juvenile connotations of the knickers boys wore. Knickers became fashionable in the 1920s as a sporty way to dress for teenagers and young adults. The fashion seems to have been partly borrowed from golf which like tennis was associated with country clubs. It was considered sophisticated to wear knickers in the 1920s by both boys and men, and girls sometimes imitated the style,

Knickers were worn by most boys as a juvenile style of pants. We also see older teenagers and young men wearing knickers as a sport style. Knickers were orifinally created in the late 19th century by a British aeistocrat who didn't want to get his trousers dirty on country jaunts. The style did not catch on in America for many years. We do begin to see knickers being marketed as sporty outfits in the 1920s. These knickers did not have the juvenile connotations of the knickers boys wore. Knickers became fashionable in the 1920s as a sporty way to dress for teenagers and young adults. The fashion seems to have been partly borrowed from golf which like tennis was associated with country clubs. The fashionable Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) was sometimes seen wearing them as a very young man. It was considered sophisticated to wear knickers in the 1920s by both boys and men, and girls sometimes imitated the style, as we see in this photograph (figure 1). These sporty knickers were worn with kneesocks, often socks with bold patterns like Argyles. We note Sears offeering knickers for young women at the time. One of the boys wears a bow tie, the other a long (or four-in-hand) tie. Notice the tendency of trendy girls to imitate the clothing of their boy friends. They all wear plain colored socks or stockings. The photo is American, but we know nothing else about it. Knickers were regarded as a somewhat upper-class, country club, kind of dress. The famous novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald (whose characters were often the rich and well-connected), often wore knickers as a student at Princeton and afterwards. By the 1930s knickers had become (for grown-ups) only trousers for golf, whereas most boys had to wear them until their early teens, and in many cases disliked them.