Pantyhose: Lingerie’s Party Crasher or Missing Link?
20 Jan
By Adam Welsch
Naomi & Nicole®
Since their invention in 1959 and subsequent widespread dissemination during the 1960s, pantyhose have taken a central role in the wardrobes of many women. Replacing the previous need for wearing stockings with garter belts or garter-equipped girdles, pantyhose changed the hosiery landscape forever and gave women new-found comfort and fashion flexibility. But since their creation, their makers have tried to position pantyhose as products that do more than simply smooth legs. They’ve been sold as panty substitutes, VPL erasers, light control shapewear, rump raisers, and functional (if not shaping) leg wear. Given that, are pantyhose merely hosiery, as most retailers and consumers view them, with lofty but unjustifiable aspirations to sit aside conventional panties and shapewear, or are they a unique class of intimate apparel – a hybrid of hosiery, panties, and shapewear – that complete the “under-things” spectrum from socks to bodybriefers? (more…)