English School Uniform: Colors and Gender


Figure 1.--Here we see an English girl and her little brother at their school in 1960. Notice the all grey uniforms, unusully even the boy's tie is grey, something you do not usually see. There even sees to be a grey school bag.

We note both boys and girls in England wearing grey-colored school uniform garments. Grey was clearly the dominant color for both boys and girls. This was true of virtually every school uniform garment. We see grey headwear, shirts, suit jackets but less commonly blazers, pants and hosiery. Headwear (usually caps), ties, and blazers were commonly done in color to add color to all this grey. The boys here with their blye ties and all grey garments are a good example (figure 1). The only garment not done in grey is the tie and of course shoes. This was the case for both boys and girls. We are not entirely sure why, but surely the fact that grey does not show dirt like other colors. The only major difference that separates boys and girls in terms of color was hosiery. English boys generally wore grey knee socks and ankle socks, often with tops done in the school colors. Girls also wore grey hosiery, but also white hosiery. In the 20th century we semany girls wearing white hosiery (tight, knee socks, and ankle socks). We see a few younger boys with white hosiery, usually ankle socks, but not very many. And we virtually never see boys wearing white knee socks. The only exception to this was younger boys wearing cricket whites.








HBC






Related Chronolgy Pages in the Boys' Historical Web Site
[Return to the Main Chronology Page]
[The 1880s] [The 1930s] [The 1940s] [The 1950s]
[The 1960s] [The 1970s] [The 1980s]



Related Style Pages in the Boys' Historical Web Site
[Return to the Main English school uniform color page]
[Return to the Main English school uniform page]
[Return to the Main country page]
[Long pants suits] [Short pants suits] [Socks] [Eton suits]
[Jacket and trousers] [Blazer [School sandals]



Navigate the HBC Country School Pages:
[Return to the Main School Page]
[Australia] [England] [France] [Germany]
[Italy] [Japan] [New Zealand] [Scotland]
[United States]


Navigate the HBC School Section:
[About Us]
[Activities] [Chronology] [Clothing styles] [Countries] [Debate] [Economics] [Garment] [Gender] [Hair] [History] [Home trends] [Literary characters]
[School types] [Significance] [Transport and travel [Uniform regulations] [Year level] [Other topics]
[Images] [Links] [Registration] [Tools]
[Return to the Historic Boys' School Home]






Created: 7:41 PM 11/29/2017
Last updated: 7:41 PM 11/29/2017