Figure 1.--Here we see two German children in 1931. The boy wears suspenders. We note far fewer German boys wearing suspenders by the end of the decade. |
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Suspenders appear to have been widely worn by both men and boys in the 19th century and early 20th century throughout Europe and North America. We have not yet developed much country specific information. Tghe subject is a little complicated, because the suspenders are often covered by sweaters or jackets. We notice different designs in various countries. We do not know if there were any other significant country differences. We have not yet noted them. There are numerous examples of boys wearing suspenders from many different countries archived on HBC. We note a lot of American and German examples, but that is ptobably because we have a substantial image archive for both countries. An example is the Bartle brothers in Canada.
The traditional type of suspenders with leather ends and buttonholes can be seen in a photo from France (1940). A reader tells us, "Styles of suspenders in America and Europe didn't differ very greatly in the 1930s and 1940s.
Older boys might wear suspenders. Suspenders were common in the late-19th and early 20th century. We note a Tennessee school in which the boys are wearing either overalls or suspnders rather than belts. By the mid-20th century began to be seen as old fashioned. Since World War II, belts have become increasingly common. Here age was a factor. Suspenders or suspender pants were seen as some appropriate for younger boys. Boys frequently wore suspenders to hold up their trousers during the early 20th centurys--both with knee pants, knickers, long and short trousers. A family snapshot is interesting, not only for the Nash automobile, but for the suspenders worn with long trousers. Note that both the father and the son (older brother?) wear suspenders. Father wears the traditional type of elastic suspenders with leather button-hole ends for attachment to the inner waistband of his trousers. The boy has his hands folded in a manner that obcures the attachment of his suspenders. These might have been just a junior version of his father's style, but many boys during the 1930s wore clip-on suspenders that were easier to attach and detach and that didn't require separate buttons sewn onto the trousers. A Sears ad of 1939 shows the popularity of clip-on suspenders for boys which (because of their elastic construction) were featured on the same page as the ads for garter waists.
An example of Canadian boys wearing suspenders is the Bartle brothers in Canada.
An English reader tells, "You must be aware that your 'suspenders' were always called 'braces' in Britain. This led to the saying 'belt and braces' as the description of an ultra-cautious man.
Suspenders over here were a small 'belt' worn on each leg, below the knee to keep up long socks, before the days of grip-tops. My own father wore all three! I remember clip-on braces being a very short episode for me and then back to buttons. If a new pair of trousers had buttons, then you used the appropriate braces. As a boy, I always used braces and they were 'official' in the RAF."
The traditional type of suspenders with leather ends and buttonholes can be seen in this photo from France (1940).
An important suspension device was elastic suspenders (braces). This was the way older boys and adult men held up their trousers through most of the 19th as well as the early 20th century. We are not yet, however, sure about the chronology. A reader who collects old photographs tells us that she does not note suspenders at the turn of the 20th century in her collection.Younger boys also wore them. In fact in German school portraits we see boys wearing quite a variety of trouser spension devices. The popularity of the different devoices varied over time. Suspenders were certainly one of the devices use and we see boys wering them in many school portraits. We even notice H-bar suspenders. They were not very common, but we do see examples. One example is an unidentified primary school in 1954. A related item was the leather halters often worn with Ledersonen, but sispenders were elasticised. They also tended to be more narrow than halters, but we also see wide suspenders. The Whith varied chronologically. We see both button-on and metal clip suspenders. The button-on suspenders declined in popularity during the 1930s, in part because belts became more common. We see them done in colorful vertical stripe.
We notice quite a number of Swiss boys wearing suspenders in available photographs. Our Swiss image archive is not large, so we can not yet develop chronological trends. A school portrait from 1945 shows quite a few of the boys wearing suspenders with a variety of pants. We notice both button and clip on suspenders, Much of Switzerland is German-speaking. Thus fashion trends in Germany often affect Switzeland.
