** American mail order catalogs with boys clothes -- 1928







American Mail Order Catalogs with Boys Clothings: 1928


Figure 1.--We notice an ad for a boy's navy blue corduroy, sheep-lined winter coat. It appeared in The Youth's Companion for November, 1928, p. 609. The total price is $9.95--expensive for 1928--but the ad encourages only a $1.00 down payment with six months to pay the balance.

American mail order catalogs offer a very useful time line on changing fashion trends. Quite a range of styles were worn. Quite juvenile styles were made in sizes for younger school-age boys. Little boy suits were popular, including silk suits, sailor suits, peggy cloth suits for boys 3 to 8 years. Sailor suits might have long or short pants, although most other fancy suits had short pants. Play suits were made with long pants, including coveralls. Cowboy and Indian play suits were also popular. At the same time quite young boys might wear long pants. Knickers were the predominate style for boys. We notice Sears advertizing patterened long stockings, a style we have not noticed very much.

Headwear

Boys wore a variety of headwear in 1928. Younger boys might wear sailor caps. By far the most populasr style was the flat cap. Boys from conservative families might wear a peaked cap with a suit. Boys also wore beanies. A popular novelty style was the aero or aviator cap. These caps were made popular by barn stormers and especially Charles Lindburg who flew the atlantic in 1926.

Aero cap

This aviator style was very popular among boys in the late 1920s and early 30s. Here Charles Lindburg played a major role because of his explpoits in flying the Atlantic. (Liindburg played a major role in public affairs during 1940-41 when he argued that America shouild not aid Britain because the German Luftwaffe was to powerful.) This ad appeared in The Youth's Companion for February, 1928, p. 104. Actually it was not a retail ad, rather the magazine offered the cap as a prize for boys who signed up subscribers.

Younger Boy Outfits

We have note quite a few adds that group together all kinds of different styles for younger children. Commonly these groups mixeds together boys and girls. Often they also mixed preschool and younger primary children. As these catalog pages group garments, ages, and gender together, we are dealing with them together rather than trying to separate them. The grouping suggests thtvthe children involved were wearing similar styles.

Lane Bryant younger children

Lane Bryant was an important chain store and catalog company in the 1920s. The line was much more limited than the major catalog companies with a focus on ladies and younger children. The more modern focus on stout ladies is a more recent product line. Here we have a range of garments the company offered for the 3-8 year age group for Spring-Summer wear. There is no heading. The seasonslity explains why socks are pictured rather than long stockings. The boys are pictured wearing a varity of short pants, knee pants, and knickers. Only some of the items are pictured on the illustration page.

Fancy suits

Quite juvenile styles were made in sizes for younger school-age boys. Little boy suits were popular, including silk suits, sailor suits, peggy cloth suits for boys 3 to 8 years. I'm not positive what peggy cloth was. Most featured the button-on style. Some appear to be quite juvenile and featured short pants. Sailor suits, however might be worn with either short or long pants. One long pants sailor suit offered free knickers.

Kaynee Oliver Twist button-on outfit

Here we have an advertisement for boys' clothes from the Ladies' Home Journal for October 1928, p. 238 Perhaps it appeared in October because mothers were buying new fall clothes for their boys in school. Kaynee was a firm that manufactured coordinated waists (i.e., shirts) and trousers designed to be worn together, an "ensemble" (to use the terminology of the ad itself). Here we have a white dress waist with collar and tie that has buttons at the waist line so the blue serge shorts can be buttoned on. In the photograph, the boy (who looks to be about 10 or 11 years old) wears patterned cuffed knee socks and dark leather shoes with the outfit. This style seems to have been influenced by British school dress, especially the short trousers and knee socks, although I'm not sure that British schoolboys would have worn waists with buttons and shorts that attached in this way. The Oliver Twist description is also a British allusion. It is not entirely sure what makes this an Oliver Twist suit, but I assume it is the button-on styling. Oliver Twist is often depicted in skeleton suits which employed button-on styling.

Shirts

Bouses

Boys shirts were still referred to as blouses, but this was declining. There was a difference. Shirts had tails blouses did not. Pf course that dioes not mean the terms were alsways used correctly.

Coats


Elmer Richard corduroy coat

We notice a mail order ad for a boy's navy blue corduroy, sheep-lined winter coat. It appeared in The Youth's Companion for November, 1928, p. 609. The total price is $9.95--expensive for 1928--but the ad encourages only a $1.00 down payment with six months to pay the balance. This is an interesting example of a delayed-payment scheme in American merchandizing. Note that the boy wears a flat cap and a full suit with shirt and tie underneath the coat. The coat is quite sporty by the standards of 1928, but standards of formality are nevertheless maintained.

Pants

Boys in 1928 wore a variety of pants. Here age was aajor factor. Knickers were the most common, but short and long pants were often worm, especially by younger and older boys. Many play outfits had long pants while suits were usually short pants or knickers for younger boys and knickers or long pants for older boys. Many boys wore short pants all the time and not just on a seasonal basis.

Short pants

We see American boys wearing short pants in 1928, especially younger boys. They were not nearly as common as in Europe. And they were much less common than knicker. But we see many younger boys wearing them. There was also asocial class factor. Boys from affluent families whose mothrs were more atuned to European fashion were most likely to wear shorts. We see boys wearing shorts all year round and not just as summer wear. A good example is the cover of The Boys Buyer (October 1928) which had a lot of fall back to school clothes.

Knickers

Most American boys wore knickers in 1928. The mailorder catalogs show a wide variety of knickers, both knicker pants and suits done with knickers.

Long pants

While knickers were the most common type of pants for boys, many boys did wear long pants--including quite young boys. This varied widely from family to family.

Play Suits

Play suits

Play suits were popular, especially coveralls. There were also costume play suits, including cowboy and Indian suits. These playsuits were often made with long pants, some for boys up to 14.

Hosiery

Knee socks were beginning to replace long stockings by 1928. Almost all boys wearing knickers were wearing them with kneesocks rather than long stockings, especially older boys. Ankle socks were behinning to be worn, but not commonly with knickers. Boys wearing short pants might still wear long stockings during the cooler months. We notice Sears advertizing patterened long stockings, a style we have not noticed very much.

Sears novelty stockings

I hadn't realized that for a short time in the later 1920s and early 1930s patterned long stockings were popular and sometimes worn by boys as well as girls. This page from Sears's Fall and Winter catalog for 1928-29 illustrates the variety of patterns then available. The heading is for "Girls' and Boys' Novelty Wool Hosiery" but, as the ad makes clear, the stockings were only partly made of wool, most being mixed with cotton or rayon yarns for greater durability and probably lighter weight.

Knee socks

We mostly notice long stockings in the early- and mid-1920s. They were plain colored stockings. Black was popular in the 1910s, but we see a lot of children wearing tan shades in the 1920s. We mostly see plain colored knee socks as well. We sudenly in the late-1920s see brigtly colored patterns. We are not sure just why, perhaps technical innovations at the mills. For the most part the bright patterns were mostly done for knee socks, but as you can seen in the Sears novelty stockings, they could be used in long stockings as well. The patterned knee socks were often called gold socks. An early appearance of patteeebed knee socks can be veen in the cover of The Boys Buyer (October 1928) which had a lot of fall back to school clothes.

Stocking Supporters

Children still commonly wore long stockings in 1928, although knee socks were beginning to be worn by the late-1920s. Boys wore short pants, knickers, and long psnys. Long stockings were still commonly wirn with knickers. As long stockings were still worn we continue to see adverisements for stocking supporters. One advertisement for a children's underwaist was offered in sizes 2-12 years. Many 12-year old wore knickers in 1928 and we see many wearing long stockings. Short pants were mostly worn by younger boys. Girls also wore long stockings. The adverisement as it was for children meant that the same style was suitable for both boys and girls.

Underwear

We note several advertisesments and catalogs which offered a varirty of children's underwear. The offerings were not only in the mzjor catalogs, but in popular mass-media magazines and local newspspers. There were both different styles of underwear as well as seasonal vaiations.

Minneapolis Knitting Mills underwear

The Minneapolis Knitting Mills placed an advertisement for their underwear in Parents Magazine (October, 1928, p. 43). The ad shows several of their styles of children's underwear, including sleepwear, union suits, waist union suits, and an infant's undershirt. The company at the time was one of the principal manugacturers of underwear in the United states.

Nazareth waist union suits

Here we have images of three different styles of waist union suits made and advertised by the Nazareth Waist Co. These waist suits are gender-neutral--all three styles worn by both boys and girls. The main line of waist union suits was intended for boys and girls between the ages of 2 and 13, but larger sizes for children 14-15 years old were available by special request.

Spring-summer underwear

This advertisement appeared in the Lima News of Lima, Ohio, on May 4, 1928, page 16. Such ads were common in the eatly 20th century. The store selling the underwear was the W. T. Grant Company, 202 N. Main St. in Lima, a well-known local family clothing store. The ad is interesting because it illustrates six different styles of summer and spring underwear for boys and girls. During the 1920s nearly all children, both boys and girls from about 6-18 years of age, wore union suits, one-piece garments that combined shirts and drawers and were sometimes equipped with the features of an underwaist in addition. Such union suits were made in both knitted and nainsook styles, the nainsook fabric being especially appropriate for hot weather and used also for adult men's underwear (often referred to as BVDs). The knitted style of union suits were made with both short legs and ankle-length legs and could be had with short or long sleeves. The summer nainsook styles all had short legs and were sleeveless.







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Created: April 29, 2000
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