What goes around, comes around - and that's never been truer than in the world of high fashion. Stockings may be the hottest garment for the new millennium, but did you know that they actually date back over 400 years?
The story begins in 1589. That was when the English churchman Reverend William Lee invented the world's first knitting machine and started to make hosiery out of cotton, wool and silk. The machine was a national treasure. In fact, the queen of the day threatened the death penalty for anyone who attempted to export it. It's a shame this threat couldn't have been extended for the person who invented tights!
The technology remained reasonably static right until the 1930s, when a new circular knitting machine meant garments could be made in one piece, and no longer needed to be sewn together. Elsewhere in that decade, scientists at the Du Pont company in Delaware, USA started experiments in molecular chemistry that would quite literally change the world.
Julian Hill was one of the scientists in a group led by the brilliant but manic-depressive Wallace Carothers. Hill was looking for a silk substitute, and one day he discovered that by pulling a heated rod from a mixture of coal tar, water and alcohol he could create a filament that was strong, sheer, and silk-like in appearance. Further research led to the first synthetic fibre, which soon came to be known as Polymer 6.6. Two years later, in 1937, Du Pont patented the discovery, but the year was sadly just as memorable for Wallace Carothers' untimely death. Fatally depressed, he committed suicide shortly after his wife informed him that she was pregnant. As a tribute to his work, Du Pont decided that he - rather than Hill - should be hailed as the inventor of Polymer 6.6, and so a legend was born.
Synthetic fibres were first shown by the company to the public at the World's Fair in New York in 1939. Taking the NY from the city's initials, the fibre became known as "nylon". (Just as well, then, that it wasn't in San Francisco, as I doubt sflon would have caught on quite as well!)
Nylon was a revelation. The first nylon stockings appeared in New York stores on May 15, 1940. Over 72,000 pairs were sold in the first day alone, and the Japanese silk market collapsed almost overnight. Department stores throughout America saw a similar stampede. In the first year, 64 million pairs of stockings were sold and manufacturers could not keep up with demand.
When the US joined the Second World War in 1942, most nylon production was switched into tent and parachute manufacturing for the military forces. American GIs could still get hold of stockings, though, and they became the gift of seduction as the GIs tried to woo their way into the hearts of British women.
After the war, demand rocketed. The first post-war hosiery sale took place in 1945 in Market Street, San Francisco, and attracted 10,000 shoppers. Throughout the '40s and '50s, stockings were known as "fully-fashioned" rather than the single size of most hosiery today. Fully-fashioned stockings were tailored to the shape of the leg, and had a distinctive seam at the back. When women could not afford stockings, or had difficulty getting hold of them, they would often draw a vertical line up the back of their legs to simulate the effect.
Tragically, hosiery entered the dark ages in the 1960s when some misguided soul saw fit to invent tights. Unaware of the health problems we now know tights cause, the unknowing inventors marketed them as a convenient alternative to stockings and the traditional suspender belt. And although tights became the dominant product in the hosiery market for the next 30 years, stockings are now returning to the prominence they enjoyed in the golden era of days gone by.