I am a big researcher. I like to know the history of things, who sells what where, and how much it will cost to get a bottle of 0 SPF sun oil sent to me from Paris. It is no wonder I am into vintage clothing—the history of fashion alone was well worth the effort to start doing it. I can tell a Madame Gres from a Halston by photo alone, and I can tell you what year a garment was sold based on the way the Saks label looks. I know the closest veggie burger to my house is at Fozzie's on Big Bend, and I just finished the Bowie documentary on the Bio channel. Research: The insatiable pursuit of knowledge, pop culture to be specific, is what makes my heart sing.
But the subject of pantyhose was always an enigma. Why wear something that makes you hot and itchy when it just looks like skin anyway? Why do women strut along Maryland Avenue in skirts and transparent tights in sweltering heat? While doing nothing else but reasearch on what a woman should wear inside a courtroom, I could not dodge the issue of hose. I was going to have to wear them. Me. Hose! And so began my quest to know the best hosiery, what the heck a denier was, and why I really had no choice.
Let me say that I am aware the women who wear them don't want to wear them either. They also have no choice. For conservative jobs, like a banker or an attorney, one can show leg—not too much leg—and no bare leg. Bare leg is too sexy. None of us are so old that we can't remember a time when skirts above the ankle were positively indecent. All of us grew up wearing shorts. Showing skin was a major no-no even when Joan Crawford did it in the '20s. Even Jean Shrimpton couldn't make it socially acceptable in the 1960s, and Princess Diana almost broke through the barrier with her bare legs in 1983, but still, in certan circles, stockings are de rigeur.
Denier is not one of those sugar-coated fried pastries but rather the weight of the yarn used to make stockings. The lower the denier, the more sheer the stocking. Seven is one of the most delicate you can buy, opaque tights can go up to 120 (most stockings are about 20). And tights, by the way, are not the fashion horror that nude hose are somehow. It's like foundation to me and not an issue of sexiness at all. If you need to cover leg skin because they look better shrouded in artificial skintone, buy a better moisturizer. If you have facial skin that needs to be covered with skin makeup, maybe a visit to a great dermatolgist is in order.
But still, the old rules prevails when it comes to showing leg, and I am not one to be disrespectful when so much in my precious world is at stake. I would show up in court with homemade lemon bars if it were the right thing to do. And I will wear pantyhose. But this girl isn't cracking open a little silver egg. I had to reasearch research research. And it led me in two different directions. One was Victoria's Secret and the other, Nordstrom. I went into the former, horrified by the fluorescent yellow nylon boy shorts and everything that said "Pink" across the butt. The word pink when referrring to anything below the waist makes me think someone needs antibiotic ointment. Someone said VS had divine hosiery. I didn't stay long enough to find out. I scurried past a small area that had thigh-high stockings that allegedly stay up on their own. Can you imagine if that were not true? I'd be saying, "Yes, Your Honor" with two puddles of nude nylon spreading around my conservative Tahari heels. I settled assuredly on Donna Karan's "The Nudes" at Nordstrom.
And so tomorrow morning, I put on my black suit and ruffled BCBG blouse and stuff myself like a sauasage into my pantyhose that look nude when I actually could be nude from the knee down, but no. I have to look nude but not be nude. Now if only that makeup concealer would make it seem like I have no pimple on my chin instead of looking like nude icing over a scab. If you see someone in the next stall in a women's room somewhere, leaping into the air to get her hose repositioned properly around her waist, you'll know who it was. It was me. And I won't say I saw you jumping up to fix your hose either. Deal?
Commentary by Madeline Meyerowitz
