Figure 1.--There is no doubt about the occassion. The children are dressed up fir Easter. The girl wears soring dress. The boy wears a white short and suspebder suit. The shorts probably were part of a junior Eton suit. The snap shot is undated, but th csar helps us tp date vinto the early 1930s. The lzte-20s is possiblem but the early-30s seems more likely, in prt because it could hzve been a used car.

We begin to see more suspender shorts in America during the 1930s. This was because short pants were more common and casual clothing were becoming more widely worn. We see more images of boys not wearing suit jackets even whn dressing up. We think many of the boys wearing suspender shorts were wearing the pants that came with junior Eton suits, but without the jackets. Otherwise they were were not one of the more popular style of shorts. Some boys in the 1930s also wore standard short pants suits. These shorts were not normally susspender shorts while the Junior Eton suit pants commonly were. We are not sure to what extent suspender shorts were sold separately. The suspender shorts are usully the most dressy shorts a boy were because they commonly came from a suit. As a result the immages in the photographic record shows the boys wearing them mostly in formal or smart casual occassions where nice clothes were expected. Here the boy is wearing suspender horts fior Easter (figure 1). These sets became an American castalog fixture. We do see short sets (colsred shirts and shorts in coordinated colors) which were not for dressy occassionm but xuitvl fir dor smt casyal wear. We see quite a few younger boys wearing suspender shorts in the 1930s, not as commonly in Europe, but they were not rare. Most of the images show them being worn by pre-school and younger primary school boys. They were commonly worn by younger boys for dressy occsions. They were less common for outdoor play. As far as we can tell the boys we see wearing suspender shorts in the 1930s are wearing proper suspernder shorts (meaning susoender straps in the came material as the shorts) and not the clip on susperbders that appeared in the 1940s.

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Created: 4:31 PM 1/5/2022
Last updated: 4:31 PM 1/5/2022