Figure 1.--These French siblings are wearing the sandard black school smocks. They look to be about 5-12 years old. Here we are fairly sure they are not going to or coming home afer school. Tht is because the date was December 27, 1933. Surely they are on their Christmas holiday. Thy are all wearing what look like new Christmas scarves. The smocks also look new, cold they also have been a Christmas present.

By the mid-1930s these 'happy clothes'at was even more common. This trend certinly affect French smocks, but we have few details at this time. We do not many children wearing black school smocks in the photographic record. Many of the images show the children out of school. Usually it is not clear if they are wearing the smocks as a normal garment or if they are just on the way home after school. We suspect that many children just never bothered to change after school as we often see images with some children wearing smocks and others their regular clothing. Here it seems clear that the children are wearing their smocks at home andd not as a school garment (figure 1). We continue to archive French images and hope to learn more as our archive expands. One thing that seems clear, the black school smock was the primary smoxk worn by French children. There were other colors as well as patterns, but they so not show up significntly in the photographic record.Ther is no way of being precise, but something like 95 percent of the smocks we see are the black school smocks. This is especilly the case of the boys wearing smocks.

Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Return to the Min French smock chronology page]
[Return to the Main French smock page]
[About Us]
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Bibliographies] [Chronology] [Clothing styles] [Countries]
[Contributions] [FAQs] [French glossary] [Images] [Links] [Registration] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]

Created: 10:31 AM 10/29/2017
Last updated: 10:31 AM 10/29/2017