What Did Children Wear in the 1930’s?
In the 1930’s, boys wore short pants along with a shirt and tie for school. A jacket was added for church. Girls wore dresses or skirt and blouse sets for school with gloves added for church. Children usually wore hats when they went outside.
In the 1930s, there was great variance in the types of clothes worn by children. Children of wealthy parents were dressed in popular styles of the day. Young Hollywood stars such as Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland and Shirley Temple were icons and all the young people wanted to dress like them. Unfortunately for large sections of America, the Great Depression was in full swing and few could afford to dress like their favorite movie stars. Many children wore clothes outgrown and handed down by older siblings or cousins.
Sometimes they wore adult clothes made over to fit. Flour came packaged in brightly printed cotton sacks, which were then used by mothers to sew clothes for their small children. Poor children during the Great Depression often went to school with bare feet. Shoes were a luxury reserved for church and cold weather. Conversely, wealthy children owned a pair of shoes for school, a different pair for play and still a different pair for church.
