A Traditional Schoolboy Uniform from the 1960s

Photographs of actual garments from a private costume collection

Most of the items illustrated here are still worn by British schoolboys today, although they are more likely to be pupils in costly preparatory schools. However, the short trousers with their button flies and brace buttons at the waistband date the uniform to the 1960s, when such old fashioned designs were still in use.

It should be noted that the short trousers are generously cut and rather long in the leg, reaching almost halfway to the knees. When the shorts were worn in combination with regulation stockings (long socks) there was not a great deal of bare flesh exposed to the elements.

In the 1970s and 1980s, as schoolboys abandoned shorts at an increasingly younger age, those pupils not in long trousers were usually outfitted in rather briefer shorts than boys of the fifties and sixties. In the 1990s there has been a trend back towards longer and more capaciously cut school short trousers, probably influenced by the fashion for Bermuda shorts as summer wear.