When did the "Y" back style of suspenders first come into use?
By: Marshall Trimble 03/01/2008
Q
When did the "Y" back style of men's braces, or suspenders, first come into use?
Keith Sladic
Sumter, South Carolina
A
Men wore trousers high up on the waist from the mid-1800s to the early part of the 20th century, so suspenders helped hold their pants up. The “X” and “Y” patterns on the suspenders kept them from slipping off the men’s shoulders.
The year 1857 is the earliest reference I traced to “X” suspenders. Jim Dunham of the Booth Museum in Centerville, Georgia, has seen “Y” suspenders in Civil War catalogues, so they date at least back to the early 1860s.
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