Figure 1.--These unidentified American brothers were from Chicago. The cabinent card portrait is undated, but we suspect was taken in the 1870s. The boys look to be about 5-10 years of age. Boys at the time still commonly wore long pants. The younger boy, however, wear a knee pants suit with striped long stockings. Multiple child portraits like this help tonsketch out the age of children wearing striped long stockings. The photographer was Rider.

We notice boys of all ages wearing long stockings. This was not the case for striped long stockings. Here the age range was much more narrow, We see only younger boys wearing striped long stockings. This does not appear to have been an actual attribute of the striped pattern. We have not yet found any discussion of this in fashion magazines. At this time all we have to go on is the photographic record. Rather the key factor seems to have been that when striped stockings were popular, knee pants and long stockings were mostly worn by younger boys. This includes both before and after breeching. We see a lot of pre-scgool boys wearing striped long stockings with kilt suits. And we see both pre-school and younger school children wearing striped long stockings with knee pants. Most of the available images show that the boys wearing sttiped long stockings were about 3-8 year old. We see some boys perhaps 9-10 years old wearing striped long stockings, but less commonly boys over 10 years. We are not yer sure about the age range for girls. It may have been different because girls of all ages wore dresses.

Age 5

We very commonly see 5 years olds wearing stripped stockings. The portrait here is a good example (figure 1). The inclusion of the older brother in the portrait give us a good example of the age conventions.

Age 11

We see relatively few boys wearing striped stockings by age 11 years. This was primarily because few boys wore knee pants at that age during thbe 1870s when striped stockings were the most popular. This is confirmed by both the photographic record and the photographic record although we often have to estimate ages from the photographic record. Long pants were much more common. We have found a few examples, but striped stockings were much more popular with younger boys.

Created: 11:48 PM 9/29/2008
Last updated: 9:29 PM 3/11/2010