Read All the Things: Smeltings

Friday 12 June 2015

Smeltings

It has been so long since I posted....I won't even go on about what I've been doing, but needless to say I'm feeling busy and stressed! Anyway, I went to the park yesterday, and having forgotten where I was in the book, re-read "The Letters From No One" by accident. I went on a little bit further, and have a million things I want to say - but for now, I just wanted to discuss the Smeltings Uniform.

Smeltings Uniform

The school that Dudley Dursley will attend for his secondary education is Smeltings, a school that Uncle Vernon also attended. To say the uniform is interesting is an understatement.

Smeltings boys wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers and flat straw hats called boaters.

I've always taken that for granted. Well, no more my friends. I will unveil what these items all are, in case you have never looked them up.

Knickerbockers

Knickerbockers are trousers that were popular in the early 20th Century - particularly, for some reason, as a sporting uniform. Our good friend Wikipedia reliably informs me that it was most favoured by golfers and skiers. There's no counting for taste! A good pair of knickerbockers is a baggy pair of trousers that end just below the knee. Voila!

"Avanguardisti" by Unknown - Archivio di Famiglia.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Tailcoats

A tail coat is "a coat with the front part of the skirt cut away". This was done to make riding horses easier than with a full coat, but a form of tailcoat survives that is considered formal wear, rather than the everyday wear it once was.

"BrummellDighton1805"
by Richard Dighton

Bear in mind that the tailcoats worn by Smeltings boys were maroon.

Boater

Boaters are the item probably most commonly used in school uniforms of all of these. They are straw hats with a ribbon around the sticky-outy bit of the hat, made of stiff straw and a form of formal men's wear. They were once worn by everyone who was anyone: observe.