Posted by Robert Hill on 10/11/99 from sun088.leeds.ac.uk:
In Reply to: Girls'clothes in AR posted by Beck on October 11, 1999 at 08:08:30:
In those days it was rare for women or girls to wear trousers or shorts.
Since Susan, Titty and Dot are never described as doing so, I think we
can safely assume that they always wore skirts or dresses.
Presumably separate skirts are more practical for outdoor activities?
I suspect that in Winter Holiday even Nancy and Peggy wore skirts.
Winter skirts would of course be heavier than summer ones.
"Stockings" is a versatile word. It can mean lightweight ankle socks,
and if it occurs in the summer books then that's probably what it means,
regardless of the sex of the wearer, though it might mean calf-length
socks, especially for the boys. I'm not sure whether the
characters wore any form of hosiery in summer. I think there are
references which show that they did, at least some of the time;
but I don't remember any socks in the pictures.
In Winter Holiday, "stockings" when used of the boys probably means long
woollen socks reaching to the widest part of the calf. They might be
grey in colour. They might be turned down at the top, and if so, they
might be held up by elastic garters concealed by the folded-down part.
The resulting exposed knees would iudeed be cold.
"Stockings" when used of the girls in Winter Holiday probably means
thigh-length stockings whose top is normally concealed by the skirt.
I don't have the book to hand but I think the pictures confirm this.
They would probably be black and woollen and held up by elastic garters.
They look black in the pictures.
AR uses "knickerbockers" for both boys' and girls' shorts. It struck
me as an incredibly archaic word when I first read the books in the late
1950s. I wonder, was it already old-fashioned when they were first
written? One dictionary I consulted says it means breeches which end
just above the knee and are gathered in at that point, but clearly
that's not what AR means by it.