Figure 1.--This looks like an English pre-prep school. Most of the children wear sandals, as far as we can tell with white ankle socks. The photograph is undated, but we think it was taken about 1950.

Sandals were mostly worn with hosiery. The first bare foot sandals we see (1900s decade) were worn wihout hosiery, but thes were not school sandals. We first note them being worn at school was in Europe, especially England after Word War I in the 1920s by both boys and girls. We see them im America, but only for girls at school. Again they were worn with hosiery. Few boys wore white socks like the girls, although some younger boys did. Mostly grey knee socks were worn in England. Sandal hosiery in other countris was more varied. British schoolwear was commonmly worn in Empire countries as well. School sandals were an exception, probably because going bareefot was so common in warm weather conditions. (Most of the Empire was in tropical ab=nmd semi-tropicl areas.) They became standard schoolwear in England. We see children wearing sandals throughout the rest of the 20th century, but they delined in popularity by the end of the century, mostly for boys. While boys commonly wore sandals without hosiery during the summer, they almost always wore hosiery for school. An exception was a few prep boarding schools where during the summer term boys wore sandals without any hosiery.

Created: 3:19 PM 9/2/2022
Last updated: 3:19 PM 9/2/2022