Figure 1.--This family snapshot is undated, but we think was taken in the late-1920s primaily because we no longer see long stockings and some of the bloomers are very short. There is no provinance, but the snapshot is almost certainly American. The girls are friends at a summer camp which equired a unifiorm--middy blouses and bloomers -- meaning that it was not a Scout camp. Apparently there were no retrictions as to how the girls wore their bloomers which there would have been at school.

We see both bloomer/romper outfits in the Roaring 20s. We modtly still see bloomers them for school gym and summer camp uniforms. But the rompers/bloomers themselves y were changing. They were becoming more like short psants. They were becoming dhorter and less commonly worn ih lomng tockings. These bloomer gym outfits continued to be commonly worn at seconary school for gym throughout the 1920s. Short pants were seen as too revealing by many schools, many of which still required long stockings--at least vat the beginning of the decade. We gradually see many schools beginning to switch to short pasnts and knee socks as the decade progressed--a process which wold become more extensiv in the 1930s. As far as we can tell at school, they were strictly for gym. We rarely see the girls wearing them outside of gym. We do see a few exceptions with yonger girls at primary chool, such as an unidentfied American school in the 1920s. We are not sure, however, if the girls wore them to class to ay extent. Certainly not in highschool. There are other possibilities such as not having time to change for the photograph. We also see these bloomers romper outfits being worn at summer camps, at least in the 1920s, espcially at the camps requiring uniforms which was stll common during the 20s. Single gender camps were also still common.

Created: 8:32 PM 5/28/2026
Last updated: 8:32 PM 5/28/2026