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I am not a fan of the current retro fashion trend of stealing designs, fabrics and colors from the 1960s and 1970s. I grew up during those years and it was a lot of fun - at the time. People were really into self-expression through clothing and hair.
But even so, the clothes were ugly, the colors nauseating and the fabrics horrifying. Why anyone would want to wear that stuff again is beyond me.
But there is one fashion development from the 1960s, well two really, that I will be eternally grateful for. You could say these two trends made me what I am today.
The first, and foremost, is the mini-skirt. In the 1960s it was a statement by women, as was wearing pants, that they were free to wear whatever they wanted and it was as much a political statement as a fashion statement, part of the emergence of women's sexuality as something distinct from men's sexuality. The English fashion designer Mary Quant is often credited with creating the mini skirt in 1960. I am not a political person, so my interest in mini skirts is strictly fashion.
It is my garment of choice in which to be seen. No, that's too mild. I can't imagine wearing anything else.
I mean, when I walk into a room wearing a short skirt and a pair of high heels, I feel just about invincible. I feel like I have the element of surprise on my side, like the balance of power has shifted in my favor. If there's one thing I don't want to have happen, it's go unnoticed in a crowded room.
So it would follow that my second favorite fashion development of the 1960s is pantyhose. Sorry. Garters and stockings or thigh-hi stockings with a very short skirt? Not happening. You have to have some killer thighs to even hope to pull it off. If that's you're thing - get a room. Because that's what it looks like to me. Pantyhose draw attention to my legs and not the clothing I'm wearing.
Pantyhose were first manufactured in 1959, but initially the legs were still sewn with a seam. It wasn't until 1965 that a process was developed for making seamless pantyhose. Nylon itself was invented in the 1930's by the DuPont Corporation as part of an effort to find a substitute for silk. Spandex, sold under the trademark Lycra, was invented in 1959. Spandex has the ability to stretch to five times its size without losing its original shape and was invented to replace rubber in women's clothing. Another generic name for Lycra is elastane. Most pantyhose today are a combination of nylon and spandex.
I periodically switch between wanting to spend as little as possible for a garment I will most likely throw away in a week and wanting to buy better quality in the hope it will last longer. As a result I've been shopping around and spending some time on-line looking for good deals, and in the process I've learned some interesting things about hosiery.
For example, denier is a unit of measure. It's a rather bizarre concept, too. Technically, it's the weight in grams of 9000 meters of a single strand of a fiber. In the case of hosiery, that fiber is typically nylon or a nylon and lycra blend. One denier means a 9000 meter strand of fabric weighs one gram. This is pretty strange since 9000 meters is a little over five and half miles! It makes me wonder how they came up with 9000 meters as the standard length.
The main thing though is that a lower denier means sheerer hosiery. The sheerest I've come across is seven denier - a five and a half mile long strand that weighs seven grams. Sheerer hosiery is more likely to tear and I find that less sheer hosiery smoothes out my legs and hides a little bit of the muscle definition that years of running and cycling have created, so I look for pantyhose in the 20 denier range.
Denier is a precise indicator of sheerness/opacity. Unfortunately, it is non-existent in the United States, where less precise terms such as "day sheer," "semi-sheer," "nude" and "opaque" are used to categorize hosiery. Between the various manufacturers there is no consistent application of these terms.
Denier is still used exclusively in Europe and England (where all pantyhose are called tights) as an indication of sheerness. Typical daytime pantyhose will fall into the 15 to 20 denier range, and overlaps with evening wear pantyhose, which can range from 12 to 20 denier.
The National Hosiery Association offers an interesting pamphlet called "Sheer Personality" that describes the correlation between denier and the less precise terms found on hosiery packaging.
The less expensive brands of pantyhose, the kind bought in a drug store or supermarket, have a leg that is little more than a tube of nylon. Were it not for the label at the back of the panty, you wouldn't be able to tell front from back. But more expensive brands go through a process called "boarding" and are "full-fashioned," a term usually applied to stockings. This means that the leg of the pantyhose is shaped like your legs, with a noticeable curve to the calf and ankle, and the pantyhose legs are wider around the thighs.
To achieve this, the pantyhose are fitted over a form that looks like a leg and subjected to pressure and steam, causing the nylon to shrink and take on the shape of the form. Pantyhose made this way will be more expensive, but also be more comfortable to wear, or so I'm told.
What I find most interesting is the "debate" (if you can call it that) over wearing hosiery with open-toe shoes and sandals, especially sandals. The hard-core fashion mavens - the self-appointed Fashion Police - insist that pantyhose with sandals is strictly for your mother. It's a generational thing and it's not for the Baby Boomer generation and everyone after. Nowadays the bare leg seems to the number one fashion statement.
The advice from this group of people is: if you must wear pantyhose, wear a closed-toe shoe.
OK. So why do all pantyhose manufacturers make a "sandal foot" variety of pantyhose? Maybe that's a naive question, because the answer is "so they can sell more pantyhose." Needless to say, the , on their web site, says it's OK to wear pantyhose with sandals, but you have to wonder if they'd tell you it's OK to wear pantyhose in the shower, too.
In the middle of the debate are the rest of us, the more forgiving among us, those who acknowledge that not everyone has legs that make a fashion statement. The people who admit that some of us have varicose veins or skin that is no longer hard to distinguish from silk. This moderate point of view says that wearing pantyhose with any kind of shoes is a matter of choice and comfort, comfort over baring your legs.
There is a bit of compromise from the radical bare-leggers and the moderate comfort-levelers, however. Pantyhose with "peep-toe" shoes, shoes that are mostly closed around the toes except for a peep-hole that shows the end of the big toe, is always acceptable. Pantyhose are even acceptable with so-called "Mary Jane" styles, shoes that have a strap over the instep, even if the heel is bare, as long as the toes are covered.
One criteria the moderates use when determining if pantyhose are appropriate is skin tone. Generally, un-tanned legs, and I mean white glow-in-the-dark legs, should have some help from pantyhose. They say it all depends on how comfortable you are with your legs. I am not so comfortable, so for me pantyhose are a must no matter what I am wearing.
Finally, there is a new product out, a new kind of pantyhose made explicitly to be worn with strappy sandals. I'm not talking about Spanx. That's an old product. This one is called "ToHos" and they are pantyhose with a notched big toe so that you can wear pantyhose with thong-styled sandals. They are not toe-less. The foot is entirely covered. According to their , "Tohos allow the wearing of pantyhose with thong--or any--sandals without having to dress down your look with bare feet or toes."
I hope that clears up the issue of what to wear - or not to wear - with sandals.
Here are some places I've found on the web where you can shop
and also get some good information about sizes and styles....
