Figure 1.--Here we see a German boy on his way to school in 1902. He wears a kneepants sailor suit. The same picture could have been taken in several different European countries. Click on the image for the full frame.

Boys in Europe and America in the early 20th century were commonly wearing kneepants. Younger boys wore bloomer knickers. We also see short pants which were adopted by the new Boy Scout movement for their uniforms. Variations in the fashions worn in different countries were quite pronounced to the extent that boys in unidentified portraits can often be identified as to nationality and social class, something that is very difficult to do today. Knickers were commonly worn in Britain during the late 19th centtury, but they were less common in America. One of our earliest examples of knickers being worn in lieu of knee pants is a photograph of a Arkansas boy (1900s) wearing pants that are gathered above the knee, apparently with an elastic band like bloomers and worn with white long stockings. We note an early example of above-the-knee knickers in Russia in 1905--a photograph of the aged novelist Tolstoy conversing with some school children. Notice that the boy, aged about 8 (see fig. 2) wears very short knickers, gathered with an elastic band around his thigh, and long black stockings. These knickers were apparently an alternative to knee pants in imperial Russia during the first decade of the 19th century.