Figure 1.--Patterns and modern photography of period clothing provides valuable information on material, color, detail, and desisn that is not always available through contemprary photography.

A HBC reader reports that he has a pair of old store stock, or NOS, boys knee pants. They were made in Canada and sold in Ontario. He is in the process of drafting a rough working pattern for them. They still have the tags on them. They have three buttons on each leg. They area large size, prehaps an 18 in today's sizes. They are black wool with thin silver or grey pinstripes.

Chronolgy

HBC at this time has no information on when the pants were made. Presumably they were made in the late 19th or early 20th century.

Location

They were made in Canada.

Details

They have three buttons on each leg. They are black wool with thin silver or grey pinstripin. The pants are lined and have a button fly, and buttons for suspenders on the outside. Two original tags from the factory in upper right corner.

Age

The label says size 33. I'm not sure what this means. They are a rather large size, prehaps an 18 in today's sizes. This helps to date the image as older boys mostly wore kneepants from the 1890s through the 1910s, by the 1920s it was becoming more commin for boys to wear knickers and the age of the boys wearing them gradually declined.

Usage

HBC does not know if these pants were for ordinary wear or for dress wear. Many boys in the late 19th century did not have the large wardrobes boys have today. Thus a new pair of pants would be used for school or special events and a boy would wear an old pair for play.

Figure 2.--HBC is still not sure what size 33 means, but the pants would be about size 18 in modern Canadian and American clothing.

Assessment

These Canadian kneepants appear to be very similar to those worn by American boys. They are an indication of the influence of American fashions on Canadian boys' wear.

NOS

NOS is a term common in the vintage car area. It can mean New Old Stock, or as some say Never On Shelf. It is most commonly used when describing old car parts that did not pass factory inspections or were left overs that never went on a car or were never sold, but I have heard it used elsewhere as well. It is used here to mean vintage clothing that was never sold and used.

Reader Comments

A reader writes, "I thought this may have referred to the outside seam measurement, if you look at the small label under the 33 you'll see a 'W' which presumably means waist (figure 2)."