Figure 1.-- This is a good examole of the French postcards we see in the early 20th century. We see boys wearing both straigh-leg knee pants and bloomer knickers like the boy here is wearing. The French term was " culotte bouffante ". The card is undated, but was probably made about 1910.

We see bloomer knickers being widely throughout Europe and not just with tunic suits. We note suits with bloomer knickers in the 19th century. We note them worn with blouses and tunic suits in the early 20th century. Bloomer knickers seem particularly popular in France. A French reader tells us that they were not very common in France, but we see quite a number of images of French boys wearing them. Many of the images we have found were depictions in post cards. This probanly reflects the large French post card industry and our limited French archive. The common appeaance in post cards suggests to us that these pants were seen as stylish. It probably does suggest that it was a style more popular with middle-class than working -class people. We are not enirely sure about the chronolog, but they seem to have been popular from the mid-19th to the early 20th century. We rarely see them after World War I. We are not sure what they were called in the 19th century, but we see them referred to as " culotte bouffante " in early 20th century catalogs. We note them being worn with three-quarter socks in the early 20th century. An example here is an Au Bon Marché, a large Paris Department Store in 1911.