American Mail Order Catalogs with Boys Clothings: Sears Pilgrim Underwear (1942)


Figure 1.--Sears offered various styles of winter underwear for boys and girls. Notice that the styles are unisex and suitable for either gender. Waist suits were generally made for children up through the age of twelve, because by the early 1940s most children older than this had ceased to wear long stockings to school. Notice that the garter tabs for hose supporters are a feature of all the different types of union suits offered here--which means that some children were still wearing long stockings on top of long-legged underwear.

Sears had its own brand of underwesr--Pilgrim. Sears offered various styles of winter underwear for boys and girls. Notice that the styles are unisex and suitable for either gender. Waist suits were generally made for children up through the age of twelve, because by the early 1940s most children older than this had ceased to wear long stockings to school. Notice that the garter tabs for hose supporters are a feature of all the different types of union suits offered here--which means that some children were still wearing long stockings on top of long-legged underwear. It presented a rather lumpy appearance, and many children hated the double-layering. In more fashionable circles waist suits in short-legged styles were preferred because mothers felt that the stockings along (if worn high on the leg with hose supporters) would keep children warm enough. But union suits, whether short legged or long legged, were still the regulation underwear for children up through the age of 12--and often much older.

Sears

The Sears, Roebuck and Co., huge merchandising firm centered in Chicago was founded by Richard W. Sears (1863-1914) and A.C. Roebuck (1864-1948). Sears had begun a career in mail-order business in Minnesota 1886. In Chicago he and Roebuck joined resources and formed a corporation in 1893 as a mail-order business under title Sears, Roebuck and Company. In 1895 Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932) bought Roebuck's interest in firm and became president on Sears's retirement 1908. A retail-store system was added 1925. The first foreign store added in Havana, Cuba during 1945 and becane te first expropriated store in 1960. The Sears-Roebuck brought the production of industry to the fartherest corner of rural America, opening the cornucopia of the consumer age to rural America. All the new things that were changing American life danced across their pages. Through it, a huge Chicago warehouse offers to modernize the farms and small towns of the Midwest.








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Created: 3:23 AM 8/16/2015
Last updated: 3:23 AM 8/16/2015