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Blazers were done in a wide range of colors, even quite bright colors. We believe this was once even more variety than that which we observed in the 1980s when most of our school visits occurred. We still noted quite a range of colors, including blue, black, brown, green, grey, pink, red, and yellow blazers. The various colors were of course done in a variety of shades. Blue in particular was a very popular color for school blazers and done in quite a number of different shades. We believe that in general the colors were becoming mote muted. Navy blue blazers seem to have been the most common single color at prep schools. Black was worn at some ptrep much more prevalent at senior (secondary) schools, especially stsate primaries.
Blue in particular was a very popular color for school blazers. Blue is a major color for boys' clothing and this is reflected in the color od school blazers. We are not entirely sure whu blue became so associated with boys clothing. We notice that some early charity schools for boys in England had blue iuniform, in part because blue was the least edpensive color of dye. This may have been a faxctor in establish blue as a boy's color. The popularity of sailor suits may have been another factor. Whatever the reason, blue was the most common color we noted for prep school blazers. We saw more schools with blue blazers than any other color. They were done in quite a number of different shades. We norice light blue blazers as well as dark navy blue ones. Some blue blazers were done in a a bright royal blue.
Brown was another major color for boys' clothing. It was not, however, a real common color for blazers. A factor here was that it did not go real well with the grey or black trousers worn at most of the schools. At least one school with bron blazers had the boys wear brown shorts to go better with the blazer. This was one of the few blazer colors that were repeated for the trousers.
We did not find many schools with green blazers. We are not sure why that was. Green is a color that is used for boys' clothing. And green goes good with grey trousers. The shade we saw most commonly was bottle green.
Grey was of course a very common color for trousers, both short and long trousers. It was not, however, very common for blazers. A few schools did have grey blazers. gain this was not a very common blazer color. This was probably because it was not very destinctive and did not stand out. It was rather like wearing a grey suit as boys commonly wore grey trousers.
Some schools had a maroon blazer, a kind of muted red shade. Maroon is one of the colors that we note being used in boys' clothing. It was not as bright as the cherry red blazers adopted at some schools. This was not a real common color, but we did not it at several schools. One school with a maroon blazer was transitioning to a brigher shade of red.
A few schools had pink blazers. This was not a color normally used in boys clothing, at least in the 20th century. Pink was one of the few blazer colors that the boys commdented on. They did not like it at all. Even younger boys were away of the modern color conventions that pink was associated with girls.
Red was another popular color for blazers. Some schools wanted a destibctive blazer color and red was one of those colors. There were different shades. Some schools had bright cherry red blazers. Boys had various attitudes toward bright red blazers. Some liked them and others did not. Some boys, often the older boys at the school, do not seem to like bright colors that make them stand out.
Yellow was not a common color for school blazers. We did notice it being worn at one choir school.
