Figure 1.--Here we see three children in a studio mock up of a play room. They must be sibkings. They look to be about 2-10 uears old. The boys wear identical Eton collars and bow ties with vested suits, alyjoiugh the older boy may be wearing long pants. They are dark suits, but we are not sure sbout the colr. The portrait is undated, but looks like the 1910s, poerhsos the very early-20s.

Boys wore various colors of short pants suits. Boys in general wore wore more muted colors than girls. Thus we have a narrow swatch of colrs fir these suits. As much of our information comes from the photographic record, hiwever, we are not entirely sure about the colors. This is especially the case in that when shirt osnts suits were the modt populsar we have almost entirely black and white photography. We see quite a few dark suits in the early-20th century. After Workd War II the nost popular color becane grey. Of course grey comes in various shades. Charcoal grey can look virtually black. As best we can tell, Ebglish boy generally wire the lighter shades, certainly after World war II. The short pants suits were almost alwats worn with knee socks that matched the color of the suit. We are not sure just why grey was so popular for boys' suit. Interestingly in America it was the black or navy blue suit worn with black or nvy knee socks that were especially popular. This at keast ti hsve been the case by the 1950s. While we see dark suits, with black abd white photograojy, we are not sure if they are black or navy blue or even a ark brown. There were other colors, but they were not nearly as popular. The lighter coliored suits we think were often grey.

Created: 2:37 PM 9/28/2020
Last updated: 2:37 PM 9/28/2020