Figure 1.--Here we see the boys and girls at an English Catholic primary school in 1969 doing their First Communion. The boys are basically wearing their school uniform with adifferent tie and and footwear and white socks. We se see white shoes strap shoes, and white socks. English Boys this age commonly wear sandals, but not white sandals and strap shoes. The girls wear the standard junior wedding dresses.

We see more informality in the 1960s, at least for the boys. Many schools in the 1960s began having the boys do their first communion with out expensive suits. This was the bginning of a trend way from suits. After the 60s we see far fewer boys wearing suits than was the case in the first half of the century. Rather we see see the boys just wearing white short with their school short pants. We see the boys at an inidentified school all dressed alike (1969). We continue, however, to see the girls wearing the classic junior wedding dresses. Note the boys are not wearing suits, but just white shirts and grey shorts which they probably already owned. All bothers had to buy were white shoes or sandls and perhaps white ankle socks. Not having to buy white suits substantially reduced the cost of outfitting the boys for First Communion. And we do not see three boys wearing white shoes and sandals as we saw in the 1940s and 50s. Although the girls are still wearing junior wedding dresses. Note the boys are wearing white ankle socks and not knee socks. We see this in the 1940s as well. Knee socks were commonly worn in England, but not white knee socks. Even white ankle so cks were not that very common. This was probably because white socks were generally associatd with girls in England. Many English schools has the girls wearing white socks as part of their school uniforms. We also begin to see fewer boys wearing short pants in the 1960s. at first it as just older boys, but by the end of the decade we even begin to see fewer younger boyy wearing shot pants.

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Created: 11:47 PM 12/4/2014
Last edited: 11:47 PM 12/4/2014