*** English boy clothes -- headwear stocking caps








English Boys' Headwear: Stocking Caps


Figure 1.--This little boy wears a fancy sailor's boy suit with a big stripey bow and floppy cap with a tassle to match. He's holding onto a ship's rigging, which since the studio was in Southampton, one of England's great sea ports, is not a surprise. We would guess it was taken in the 1880s or early 90s.

We also note English boys wearing knit stocking caps. Some in England call them "wooly" caps. They do not seem to be nearly as popular as in many other countries. But our information here is limited. This seems to have been basically a casual cold-weather style. We note at least a few boys wearing these stocking caps with sailor suits. Striped stocking caps were considered stylish with sailor suits. We note different styles of stocking caps. Some were elogated and had tassles or poms. A related style is the balaclava. A British reader tells us, "Wooly hats with or without pompoms (pompoms reserved for girls and younger boys and those with a unique sense of humour) have been popular in the United Kingdom on and off for a very long time. The 40s to late 70s saw a big surge in home knitting and most such headwear was home produced, thereafter there was a decline in wooly hats until the early 90s when factory knit woolen hats became very popular again, especially for teenagers and those in their early 20s, particularly as many bore football emblems or designs tied to bands or popular brand names such as Nike etc. These still remain quite popular and not just in colder weather. Around the same period those into skateboarding and associated music scene took to wearing similar headwear albeit plainer, slightly longer ad often of a 'rougher' knit pattern. Again, this is still quite common to this day. In some parts of the the UK, especially northeastern England ,these are called Duts."







HBC





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Created: 3:37 AM 6/26/2007
Last updated: 11:32 AM 6/30/2007