Figure 1.--Notice that one of the boys kneeling, the one with his jacket unbuttoned, has no belt on, which means that he is wearing suspenders to hold up his knee pants. You can see by the way his trousers are hiked up that he is wearing suspenders. He could, of course, be wearing an ordinary pair of button-on suspenders. In this case he would probably use a skeleton waist or underwaist with supporters to hold us his long black stockings. But he might equally well be wearing a suspender waist, a garment that combined suspenders for trousers and garters for long stockings.

The usge of suspenders has varied widely over time. Unfortunately usage is also very difficult to assess. HBC relies heavily on the photographic record and here it is not very helpful. We do see some boys wearing suspenders, but we believe that this is a small fraction of the boys actually wearing them. This is because, boys often covered up their suspenders with vest and jackets. Thus the very substantial photographic record of formal portraits rarely provids a clue. Even boys not wearing suits usually covered them up, often with sweatrs. This was not a fashion choce, but sweaters usually fall below the waist line, thus a boy would have to wear a sweater over his suspendrs. Probably a better indicator of suspender usage is the prominance of offerings in clothing catalog. Another indicator is the prevalence of belt loops on pants and trousers.