Tube Socks: Chronology


Figure 1.--Here we see kids in a Louisiana primary school participating in a photo conquest during 1882. Notice how popular tube socks were at the school. A reader writes, "This was a fun picture. I found it full of life. I remember the cameras the children had. Made me smile quite a bit. Certainly a bunch of happy kids."

Tube socks were very popular throughout the 1970s. I'm not sure about the precise chronology, but we began noticing tube socks in the late-60s. We think that sports were a major factor here. The increasing popularity of basketball and soccer at the time helped to make tube socks popular. American boys began playing soccer in large numbers for he first time in the 60s. And at the same time basketball also became much more popular. Boys wore short pants for both sports. We see plain white socks, but the tube socks became very poular because colored bands could be coordinated with the rest of the uniform as we see with the boy here (figure 1). They were commonly worn in both basketball and soccer uniforms. At the time rather short cut horts were worn for both sports. And we begin to see boiys wearing these short-cut shorts and tube socks as casual wear at about the same time. Tube socks were still very popular in the early-80s, but they began to decline as the decade progressed. Tune socks largely disappeared in the 1990s, probably because as the decade progressed, boys began wearing longer, baggy shorts.







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Created: 2:26 AM 6/11/2018
Last updated: 8:51 AM 6/13/2018