Figure 1.--These Czech boys wear matching smocks. The boys are named as Zova and Karel and the photo was taken in 1925 at the Willy Struminger Studio in Vinohrady in Czechoslovakia. I'm not sure yet where that is in Czechoslovakia. Click on the image to see the full portrait with his older brother in a matching smock. Image courtesy of the MD collection.

Czechoslovakia no longer exists having broken up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 199?. We have very little information on Czech boys' clothes at this time. We believe that Czech styles were heavily influenced by Austrian and German clothing styles. This is understandable as Czecheslovakia until 1919 was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and borders Germany. We have few Czech images, but do note that a few boys did wear smocks at home. Two brothers in 1925 wear a checked, back buttoning smock with wide whire collar and floppy bow (figure 1). It is winter time and they also wear long stockings. A treader writes, "When looking at the full picture it seems to me that the boys may be wearing home made smocks more like tunic suits." HBC thinks that they may be well made. They do not appear, however, to be tunic suits. There are no matching bloomer knickers which are required for tunic suits. Also I have never seen tunuic suits with this bold pattern. There is no way to tell, but I assume that the boys are wearing short trousers under their smocks. These do not appear to be school smocks. We do not know if Czech school children ever wore smocks. We have so little information on Czech children's wear that it is difficult to assess Czech smocks. We do not know how common this was in Czeslovakia or what the fashion influence was. We also have little chronological information about when smocks were worn in Czechoslovakia. The images we have noted all come from the pre World War II era. We also note a Sudeten German boy in Czechoslovakia during the 1930s wearing smocks. A check or plaid pattern appears to have been especially popular for smocks in Czechoslovakia. The material worn by the Sudeten boy, for example, apperars to be a rather Scottish plaid, but smocks were not commonly worn in Scotland. This appears to be more of a Czech than German fashion influence as smocks were not commonly worn in Germany.

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Created: December 20, 2002
Last updated: December 20, 2002