Knitted leg coverings—stockings, tights, pantyhose, socks—that have been essential to both male and female dress for centuries, a category of clothing that exists at the boundary between garment and accessory, between necessity and ornament.
Hosiery was originally made from woven fabric, cut and sewn to shape, until the invention of the knitting frame in 1589 by William Lee. Lee’s machine could produce stockings with a speed and uniformity that hand-knitting could not match, and the hosiery industry became one of the first sectors of the Industrial Revolution.
For most of fashion history, hosiery was a male garment as much as a female one. The silk stockings of the eighteenth-century aristocrat were visible below the knee, a marker of wealth and refinement. It was only in the twentieth century, with the shortening of hemlines, that hosiery became primarily associated with women’s dress.
The invention of nylon stockings in 1939 transformed hosiery. Nylon was stronger, sheerer, and cheaper than silk, and the first batch sold out within days. The postwar era made hosiery a mass-market essential, worn by women of every class. Today, hosiery has been partly displaced by bare-leg culture, but it remains a marker of formality, a coded signal that the wearer has made an effort to present a leg that is smoother, more even-toned, and more uniform than nature provides.
