**
United States boys clothes: garments -- pants knee pants chronology 1910s outfits
United States Knee Pants: The 1910s Outfits
Figure 1.--Here we see two brothers wearing light-weight summer knee pants suits. They look to be about 6-9 years old. His older brother wears a collar buttoning suit with some Norfolk styling. Both are done with knee pants. The younger boy wears white long stockings and sandals. His older brother wears black long stockings. The post card has Mr. & Mrs M. Wicks in the adrress box, perhaps the grandparents. The postcard is undated, but the Velox diamond stamp box dates it to 1907-14. We would date it to the early-1910s. Most boy the sge of the older boys wore knicker suits in the 1910s, byt there was still some kjnee pants being worn in the early-10s, especislly for summer wear.
While knickers became the dominant pants type for boys in the 1910s, they were not the exclusive type of trousers worn. Knee pants did not immediately disappear. Younger boys commonly wore blouses with knee pants as well as knee pants suits of various types. This included some jacket suits, but more commonly,informal suits that had shirt-like tops. A good example of a jacketed suit is the one worn by Floyd Van Horne. He wears a knee pants Norfolk suit about 1915. Standard suits done with knee pants during the 1910s are very rate in the American photographic record. The vast majority of the stndard lapel suits we see in the 1910s are knicker suits. We see a few ci=ollar butooning suitys like thevomne the bolder boynhere is wearing (figure 1). Juvenile suits were a different matter. We note a wide range of juvenile outfits for boys done mostly with knee pants. The styling was quite diverse. Oliver Twist suits were especially popular. Most were done in button-on styling. Sailor suits were also very popular, also often done with button-on styling.. We see some juvenile knicker outfits, but fpr the yonger boys, knee pants were much more common. Tunics like the ones worn in the 1900s were still popular in the 1910s. They were mostly worn with bloomer knickers, but we also see some worn with straight leg knee pants. This was mostly in the 1910s. Notice the younger boy here is wearing a short tunic with kneepants (figure 1).
