1920's hosiery ad - illustrated by Coles Phillips.
The story of how hosiery developed into such a uniquely feminine piece of apparel is largely to do with the developments in fiber.
During the late 1800's, the fibers used in hosiery changed over from woolen to cotton. By the early 1920's, women's stockings were almost exclusively made from silk.
In the 1930's, Stocking sales began to rise dramatically and new synthetic fibers were appearing regularly.
Then Wallace Carothers from Dupont, invented Nylon, and womens legs were never the same again.
Believe it or not, Nylon was first used for such boring items as fishing line, toothbrush bristles! DuPont claimed its new fiber was "as strong as steel and as fine as a spider's web,"
Nylon stockings were first demonstrated to the American public at the 1939 New York World's Fair ! During World War Two, american GIs charmed their way across Europe with pairs of much sought after Nylons from the USA.
Bob Hope joked that the soldiers had more access to nylons than most women he knew back home.
During the war, women were encouraged to donate their used silk stockings to the war effort.Not for parachutes, but for missiles! At the end of the war, famously in the city of Pittsburgh, 40,000 plus women stood out all night in heavy rain, to be in line for the first commerially available nylons to the average american woman. Seamless stockings arrived in the 1950's, and nylon became even more luxurious with the invention of Spandex.
Denier - it's meaning
A unit of weight for measuring the fineness of threads of silk, rayon, nylon, etc. Bet you didnt know that !
Vintage Stocking Films - Glamourdaze on YouTube
Vintage Stocking Adverts
