Figure 1.--This 1940s photobooth portrait shows three farm boys, presumably brothers, all wearing identical shirts and overalls. They look to be about 6-12 years old. After Workd war II differences between the clothing worn in rural and urban areas rapidly disappeared.

Overalls firsr appeared in the mid-19th century. They were invented by Levi Strauss and became enormously popular with working men, but as far as we can tell were not worn by children, including wiorking-class boys. This can be seen in school photography. You do not see boys, including county boys, going to school in overalls. Suddenly in the late-1900s (about-1908-09) we begin to see boys wearing overalls to school. We have no idea what brought about such a sudden change. This included boys of all ages, although many of the older boys dressed up for school. Overalls were almost entirely worn by rural boys and working men. One exception was overall-like coveralls which became popular for boys (1910s). Overalls continued to be worn by boys of all ages in the inter-War era. A major change began before the War. Hollywood began outfitting movie cowboys in jeans--esentilly overalls without bib fronts. We begin to see primary boys wearing jeans (1940s) and they quicjky becane ubiquitous among primary boys after the War (late-1940s-50s). Teenagers begabn wearing jeans (1950s), but were disccuraged from wraring them to secondary schools. Thus for a while we modtly see younger boys wearing them. This changed in the next decade (1960s). This meant that jeans were worn by boys anf girls of all ages. We even see some children wearing overalls as a kind of fashion statement. We see jean shorts (1970s), but they do not seem to have been as popular in merica as Europe. They were worn by primary-age boys.

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Created: 9:04 PM 7/11/2012
Last updated: 9:05 PM 7/11/2012