Figure 1.--Here we see a portrait of two American boys. The portrait is undated, but we would guess it was taken in the 1940s. A reader suggests that it may have been taken in the early 1950s. Ib associate the collars more with the 40s than the 50s. An English reader writes, "The portrait of the two boys here looks toi me like it was taken in the 1940s and shows how much fashions differed in America and Britain. The boys are seen wearing long trousers whereas British boys of that age would more than likely have been wearing short trousers." We thought at first the boys were wearing suspender pants, but on closer examionation they appear to be wearing clip on suspernders thast just happen to match their pants.

At times suspenders have been seen as old-fashioned, but they never totally disappeared. This appears to have been the case in the 1950s. Generally suspenders in America and Britain were seen as old fashioned, but some younger boys wore them, especially when dressibng up. TYhere may have been some social class connotations. At this time we only have informatiion on a few countries. We do not know how suspenders were preceived in other countries at this time.

America

We note quite a few younger Amnerican boys wearing suspenders in the 1950s. I remember having a pair of thin black suspenders, somewhat thinner than the ones pictured here. Strangely I have no real memnmories of actually eraring them. I do have a general recollection that they were worn more for dressup than play. One U.S. reader reports, "I remember suspenders being worn by younger boys in the 1950s, but most school-age boys looked on them as old fashioned."Here there seem to have been differences even within the United States. Another reader writes, "When I was at Harvard in the 1950s and at Bowdoin College in the 1940s suspenders were very fashionable for students and were worn a lot. Most Harvard professors wore suspenders, I think. I wore them with short pants also sometimes in the 1930s. I'm not sure, but I think there may have been a class connotation to suspenders. They were, I believe, more common among working class and upper class boys than they were among middle-class boys. For working-class people suspenders were just a matter of practicality because they were considered more comfortable and didn't keep slipping down during strenuous activity. The upper-class association might have been because they were so common in Europe, and American upper-class families sometimes took their fashions from Europe. Maybe I say this only because suspenders tended to be worn more in the northeast among the students I knew than in other parts of the country." Another reader writes, " This image is interesting in connection with the dress-alike concept that HBC has explored elsewhere. Mother seems to have dressed the two brothers alike so as to show that they are brothers close in age to each other. In the 1950s children seem to have worn clip-on suspenders more frequently than the ones with leather ends that required buttons be sewn on to the trousers. This was probably just a matter of convenience, but I recall that college boys of the period (I was a college student myself at the time), if they wore suspenders at all, wanted the more expensive kind with leather ends that buttoned onto their trousers. Tailors often argued, I recall, that trousers looked better if worn with suspenders because they hung straighter and didn't make the trousers look shorter in front and longer in back at the shoe level. My father always wore suspenders with his three-piece business suits for this reason and when he took us boys to the tailor to outfit us for college, he more or less insisted on suspenders with suits, though not necessarily with ordinary slacks to be worn with blazers or tweed jackets. But many college students of my time (in the late 1940s and early 1950s) wore suspenders even with sports jackets and chino pants. Bow ties were also part of preppy college boy look in the Ivy League colleges and universities."

England

An American reader writtes, "When I was a student at Oxford University and had a couple of suits tailored in London, the tailor just assumed that I would want to wear the trousers with braces"--what "any gentleman would insist upon." That said, British boys I noted by the 1950s no longer wore suspenders. The elastic snake-belt was especially popular at schools." An English reader, however, replies, "I must have been the exception as I wore braces until I was well into my teens. You can see me wearing a pair on one of my personal experience pages. There is a photograph of me there wearing suspenders. I always wore braces (suspenders) My Mum told me that I hadn't wide enough hips to wear my trousers with them so that is why I wore braces. The problem with wearing braces especially when I wore a pullover was when I went to the toilet. I had to take my pullover off first so I could slide the straps of the braces over my shoulders. It was quicker this way rather than to undo the straps from the buttons at the waistband. I alswo had a belt and I seem to recall it was the traditional snake clasp fastener. The gribble as it is called (Thats the snake clasp) always fascinated me. I can't remember wearing both although I must have done so. If I was wearing both then it would have been for play. When I was dressed-up I would have worn only braces. I realy had no option, my mum insisted on braces until my early teenage years when I stoped wearing them altogether, in fact, I rebelled against wearing braces. I'm sure there were many shool friends who wore braces, but I cannot remember individual cases. I know the snake belt was very popular and I seem to recall seeing one or two boys wearing them." We have noted some younger English boys wearing suspenders (braces) in the 1950s. As far as we can tell, however, from available photographs, belts were much more common then suspenders. Hopefully our British readers will provide more insights here.

France

Germany

We still see Germany boys wearing suspenders in the 1950s. We do not yet have, however, much information on German suspenders. We also note boys wearing suspender shorts. The actual suspenders are much less common than we have noted in previous years. We do note, however, quite a number of German boys in the 1950s wearing them. As best we can tell, it was mostly younger boys wearing them. We note simple clip attachments for the waistline rather than buttons or forked attachments. An example of an older boy is a German boy in a Kinderheim with short pants and rather loud elastic suspenders. Note two other boys at this Kinderheim wear Lederhosen halters. We see many boys wearing these halters. They were not always attached to Lederhosen. These halters fulfill the same basic function as suspenders and seem more popular with omee boys. There was a regionl factor here as they were more popular in Bavaria and the rest of southern Germany.

Italy