Nothing but Seamed Stockings

[helenhighwater]

Unfortunately I can't fit into the rayons, but I've got a pair of the 30 deniers - can't wait for them to arrive! They look fab.

 

[Fleur De Guerre]

I don't think you're going to find something the same for cheaper as these stockings take so long to produce on the machines. But I expect that if you could find out where these TV companies buy the rayon CC41 repro ones from and bought them direct from the supplier, you'd probably save a couple of quid.

 

[KatieD]

Rayon Stockings

Yes, the rayon stockings are expensive and I did think seriously before stocking them, but I had a conversation with a lady at the War and Peace show last year who was paying over £30 for a pair on Ebay - and that's having no idea about the quality or sizing.

As for saving a couple of pounds by going direct to the manufacturer - they've already given us a discount on their normal prices and ours our below their retail price!

Unfortunately there's no way around it.

Katie

 

[Medvssa]

It took me a few days to read this thread!

I always use stockings, rarely hold ups, and sometimes RHT and FF (I would wear those exclusively if I could afford it ).
PS: I think that RHTs that fit, fit as well as FFs, I do not get any sagging

I got some vintage FF some time ago off Ebay, they fit wonderfully (I think I am built in a bit of an old fashioned way) and I managed to find pale tone and contrast seams which is my favourite kind. The best couple of pairs I got got "explosive" runs immediately atfer putting them on, despite my extreme carefulness, which was very sad. Now I understand that possibly the nylon had become brittle and I should have washed them beforehand

Now my question is, I live in Europe and I never saw Hosiery Mate for sale. Could I use another delicates wash, such as Woolite? would this have a similar effect? thanks

 

[Miss Sis]

Medvssa, I just wash mine in any delicate wash liquid before the first wear and after wearing and that seems to help. It is important to wash (or rinse) between wears to keep the natural elasticity.

I saw the new stockings from What Katie Did and am covetting a pair too, despite the expense! Also the CC09 girdle and bra, but that's another thread!

 

[Medvssa]

I will do that with the survivors then they have been waiting in the closet for a long time (but then, aren't they used to that by now? lol ), since I was afraid of breaking them too.

Wow, now I am coveting that bra too what a beautiful pattern... but is there a girdle in this series? I didn't see that fftopic:

Back in topic, the nude FFs from What Katie Did do look quite pale compared to most of what is available (if they are the same tone than the nude/red seam for example, I do not see a picture of the nude in the simple FFs page). I just feel uncomfortable in tan stockings [huh] the palest I've seen seem to be the nudes in the Dita range from Secrets in Lace, but the price is a bit higher, and then add to that the steep overseas shipping...

 

[Miss Sis]

Wow, now I am coveting that bra too what a beautiful pattern... but is there a girdle in this series? I didn't see that fftopic:

It's on the 'front page' - just go to http://www.whatkatiedid.com/ and click on the left hand pic of the model sitting down with the stocking and you'll see the girdles.

 

[Medvssa]

Oh...

Made from delicate peach satin (which co-ordinates with both our Glamour and Harlow ranges) it had the allure of the golden days of Hollywood, whilst still being very wearable.

It co-ordinates with other ranges... I thought you meant there was a CC09 girdle too

 

[Brooksie]

I've never owned seamed stocking or fishnets...what are the rules for when to wear each, and can short women wear them without looking silly? Does it lengthen the leg or is that a pipe-dream? Is there a colour of fishnet that is more proper/vintage?

I had a pair of really thick cabled tights/hose (like pantyhose, but thick) at one point that I really loved but I don't know where to buy them now or if that's really a vintage look or me kidding myself.

And my guy thinks argyle or striped socks (the knee-high kind) are cute on girls, and I sort of like them too but associate them with more goth than vintage - was that ever a look? And what did they go with as far as dress/shoes?

Hi Viola I thought I would give you some input here... I am 5 foot 1 1/2 I wear FF seamed stockings quite a bit and I really feel that they do lengthen the look of the leg because of the long slim line in the back, for seamed stockings for day time I go with nude stocking with a nude seam for evening you can go with nude with a black seam (or some other color) and black with a black seam.

As far as fishnets go to me when I see them I think 50's and 60's, I would suggest black and for night time only. If you want to try other colors you can but I don't believe it would be period correct, however keep in mind I have had many pairs of fishnets over the years but I am not an expert on them and maybe sombody else can correct me here if I am wrong. (I have a pair of nude fishnets and I like to put them over black tights in the winter it looks neat but is no way vintage).

I have had black cable knit tights that I LOVED but last winter they wore out - I did like to wear them with vintage dresses and I always felt that they enhanced the vintage look and they were so warm! Here again I am uncertain wheather or not they are actually vintage.

Now for the sock question in the 50's college girls would wear argyle socks that came just bellow the knee with skirts about the same length so when they were standing no skin was showing but when the sat down you could see the knee ( I know this because I have a book with knitting patterns for socks and sweaters etc... from the 50's) the shoes worn were usually penny loafers or other type of loafer. I like to wear argyle socks with a knee length skirt and Mary Jane style shoe because I do not have a loafer or else I would be wearing those. As far as a striped sock I do not recall seeing those in my patern book and I look but it is packed for my impending move. But I really do not believe the striped ones are vintage though.

 

[Viola]

Brooksie, thanks so much for the detailed explanation, I really appreciate it. Okay, I could totally do the argyle look - I saw black/pink argyles at Target and they'd look darling with a knee-length skirt.

I really thought the fishnets were vintage...something about Victory lace... but it could be possible I totally made that up.

I'm very reassured to hear from another petite woman who's had success with the seamed look.

 

[Brooksie]

Brooksie, thanks so much for the detailed explanation, I really appreciate it. Okay, I could totally do the argyle look - I saw black/pink argyles at Target and they'd look darling with a knee-length skirt.

I really thought the fishnets were vintage...something about Victory lace... but it could be possible I totally made that up.

I'm very reassured to hear from another petite woman who's had success with the seamed look.

As far as the fishnets go I hope someone else here will know when the originated because I am entirely unsure as to when the came about.

 

[Medvssa]

Well, someone posted this earlier in the thread, fishnets from the 40's:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/13087-popup.html

PS: I am petite too and that is certainly not going to stop me from wearing seamed stockings

 

[Lady Day]

I know early fishnets from the 40s were called victory lace. The knit was smaller than what we think of as fishnets today, but even past that, fishnet stockings were never really considered risque' until much later.

Small knit nude fishnets were a common thing, but for some reason, the 'history' I have found only dates them with present taboos..

Here is a good brief history on stockings in general.

Here is another article I found: Pt 1

HISTORY of HOSIERY By Sid Smith
President and CEO of the National Association of Hosiery Manufacturers

Hoseiry is an old industry, older than modern day weapons, gun powder, processed foods, even civilization as we know it. About the only thing that it is not older than is the original sin, which puts to rest the hypothesis held by some that it was really a pair of sleek, sexy lace stockings that brought about the fall of mankind rather than an innocent-looking little red apple.

Early Hosiery
Some type of leg coverings have been around since the beginning of time when man began to cloth himself. Textiles are generally considered to be the creation of Neolithic man during the latter part of the Stone Age. The art of spinning a yarn or fiber came first and the yarn or fiber was used as rope or bindings, while pelts and furs were used for clothing and foot coverings. Centuries elapsed between this and the idea of weaving these threads into fabric.

Most historians consider the Egyptians to be the inventors of weaving. Weaving is the art of interlacing yarns or fibers to create a fabric, whereas knitting, a later art, is the creation of interlocking loops of a continuous strand to produce a fabric.

We know that the art of hand knitting was known and practiced in the Near East at least as early as the middle of the third century A.D. How long the art was practiced before that time is still unknown. The earliest examples of knitting are three small fragments of fabric found at the site of the ruins of an ancient Syrian city, Dura Europos, founded in 280 B.C.

About 256 A.D., the Persians attacked and destroyed the city. Before the final assault, the defending Macedonian soldiers and the city's inhabitants abandoned all their possessions and fled. The desert soon buried the buildings and their contents. Covered by drifting sand, the dry climate protected the remnants of woven cloth and knitted fabric as perfectly as if they had been sealed in air-tight vacuum containers.

Even today, it has not been established whether the three pieces of fabric found on the site were pieces of underwear, hosiery or other apparel, but it is known that they were made of wool fibers and that each was a true knitted fabric.

The art of hand knitting certainly was not lost when the Persians destroyed Dura Europos. Evidence of the practice has been found in the Egyptian tombs of the Coptic period. Four of five articles found in the tombs have clearly been determined to have been socks. Save for one distinguishing feature -- a separate pouch for the big toe -- at first glance, they do not differ too greatly from some of the bulkier knit socks of today. The division of the big toe from the other four made room for the thong of sandals.

The archaeologist Sir W.M. Petrie wrote in 1889 that a thick-knitted brown wool sock, probably of the fourth century, was found in one tomb, while another sock, hand knit of wool yarn that had been dyed purple, was found in another. One sock he found had even been darned.

In another discovery, a child's knitted wool sock had been made with several courses of pre-dyed red yarn alternating with several courses of pre-dyed yellow yarn.

What is particularly interesting about these Egyptian socks is that they were meticulously fashioned and constructed in careful dimensions to fit the foot. While the knitted fabric was clearly a flat knit (versus today's circular knit), it was carefully cut and sewn in the original full-fashioned manner to a specific size. This predates by a thousand years the mechanical production of hosiery in the late 1500s.

Hosiery Comes to Europe
How the art of knitting was introduced into Europe is still debatable. When the Arabs conquered Egypt in 641 A.D., they found a thriving textile industry. As they reached out for new conquests, these arts were carried with them. The art of Islamic culture included knitting, and evidence of this technique stretches into what is now Italy and Spain.

But however it got there, we have clear historical evidence of hand knitting being commonly practiced throughout Europe on an extensive scale by the 13th and 14th centuries.

And then, in 1589, came the mechanical invention that transformed knitting and hosiery from a home craft into an industry. Four hundred years ago, the Reverend William Lee made the first frame knitting machine to produce a flat knitted fabric for commercial production. Like many other mechanical discoveries during this period, this was an English invention and that country flourished in this new industry. To protect their corner on the market, the Queen decreed a penalty of death to anyone who would remove a machine or its plans from England.

Hosiery Is Brought to America
About this same time, the American colonies were beginning to take root and even under the threat of death, colonists smuggled hosiery knitting machines out of England into the New World and an industry was born in the cradle of the new country in the New England area. As the colonies flourished, so did the New England industrial belt including hosiery manufacturing. We have read where settlers and frontiersmen were given an allotment of so many pounds of food, sugar, gun powder, and "two pairs of socks" as encouragement to move out into the wilderness and cultivate and claim as much property as they could control.
But this northern industry was cut off from the agricultural South during the Civil War, and the loss of the southern cotton supply created severe shortages and rationing, even of hosiery. So after the war in 1865, large portions of the New England textile industry began to move South, including hosiery, to be closer to their number one precious raw material -- king cotton.

This migration continued on into the first few decades of the twentieth century spurred on by an attractive labor environment in the South (and a likewise deteriorating labor situation in the North) as well as new fiber developments that were taking place in the cotton belt.

The fiber content in hosiery up to this time was all-natural fibers: cotton, wool, or silk. Cotton and wool were warm, strong and plentiful but the bulky nature of the finished product certainly provided no flattering appeal to the shapely leg. Silk was sheer but very expensive and extremely delicate.

All of these fibers had one other characteristic: they were rigid fibers, meaning they had no stretch or give to them. This means that flat knitted fabric had to be carefully, meticulously cut and sewn to fit a specific size foot. And hosiery, during this time, came in rigid sizes just like shoes such as size 6, 6_, 7, 7_, 8, 8_ and so on. As you can imagine, this created a tremendous manufacturing inventory challenge, and tremendous overhead costs for retailers in both space and styles and sizes. For a department store to have any range in available sizes, multiplied by numerous styles or color, took a lot of space which led to the creation of the "hosiery department" in many stores, just as we know them today.
Finally, during this period, flat fabric knitting gave way to circular knitting, which simply means that a lot of the cutting and sewing was eliminated because a round tube of fabric was created. This new "seamless" hosiery was both popular and fashionable, but did not do anything to remove the problem of specific sizes.

And Then There Was Nylon
1937 marked the next major event. That was the year a patent was filed on a revolutionary new yarn called nylon. Invented by research chemists in the laboratories of DuPont, no one initially envisioned what they had.

Walter Carothers had simply discovered that a tough, durable, flexible fiber could be derived from coal tar, air and water. This molten polymer could be drawn into filaments, cooled and stretched to form very strong but sheer fibers. Finally, the sheerness of silk but strength surpassing even cotton or wool was available in a single element.

 

[Lady Day]

part 2

You can imagine the impact on the hosiery industry:

A display of nylons at the 1939 New York World's Fair created a sensation.

The first recorded sale in New York City stores was on May 15, 1940.

Women bought over four million pairs in the first few hours.

A depression hit the Japanese silk market.

When the United States entered World War II, nylon production was interrupted and women grudgingly had to go back to natural fibers. Nylon all but disappeared commercially, going totally into war production for parachutes, belts, web gear and other pieces of equipment. Already manufactured nylon stockings were melted down for aircraft tires, and they were gathered up with pots and pans and other raw materials. Movie star Betty Grable publicly peeled off her nylons at a war bond rally and they were auctioned off for $40,000.

Teenage girls, unable to find nylons on the black market, painted black seams down the back of their legs just to impress their boyfriends. And what American GI doesn't remember the bargaining power of a chocolate bar and a pair of nylons?

After the war, the large pent up consumer demand literally exploded on the retail market as soon as goods were available. What has been described as a mob of 10,000 shoppers descended on Market Street in San Francisco for the first post war sale of nylons in 1945. A department store window was shattered and several women fainted and the sale had to be canceled. Never again would the hosiery industry be the same.

The Modern Day Industry
By the 1950s, seamless nylon stockings were the rule for the well-dressed woman. Nylon and natural fibers shared the sock market. But the next major change was about to take place.

Yarn manufacturers discovered that they could add memory (what you and I call stretch) to the sheer new synthetic wonder yarn by adding crimp to the yarn while under heat. In simplistic terms, it's kind of like a telephone cord that is all wound up but recoils after the tension of pulling on the cord is released.

Stretch yarn meant that stretch fabric could be produced and this meant that a garment, like hosiery, could stretch to fit the various contours of the body. This was the final answer to doing away with all those specific rigid sizes. The industry and retailers moved quickly towards making and selling stretch goods that fit a range of sizes.

Take a typical man's 10-13 stretch sock of today. It took seven different sizes to fit men in that range prior to stretch nylon. Now one sock can fit them all. It was good for everybody. The customer got better, contoured fit all over. Retailers could dramatically cut their shelf space and still serve the same audience. And manufacturers could zero in on producing a few size ranges rather than a multitude of specific rigid sizes.

About this time, nobody even noticed the early introduction of a waist-high hosiery garment for women, available on a very limited basis, primarily for dance or theatrical use. Available from only a few select stores, they were totally rejected for everyday wear. But soon, an unrelated fashion statement would change all of that.

In the early 1960s, a skinny little rail of a model named Twiggy stepped forward in fashionable London in a mini-skirt and things were never to be the same again. The hem of the skirt was up, and as the mini-skirt took off as a fashion item, stockings and all of the old paraphernalia that went with them had to go. Women desperately needed a hosiery product that went all the way up their legs.

Hosiery manufacturers simply took the old seamless stocking machines that they had been running for years and let them run a little longer at the top. Then two legs were paired up and scissors used to cut a slit in the top of both, then they were simply sewn together and you had the forerunner of today's modern sheer pantyhose.

The first pair of sheer conventional pantyhose was produced in 1965 in Glen Raven, N.C., and we haven't stopped since. The machinery and the manufacturing processes have changed a lot, with new technology developed to produce specifically pantyhose and to automatically cut, seam, stitch and sew.

And even though hemlines since have been up, down and in between, women have not given up their pantyhose. Once in them, they never went back to the bulky inconvenience and discomfort of snaps, clips and corsets of an era gone by.

At the same time, there were things happening in the sock industry, too. While the argyles of the flapper era had come and gone, men had settled down to your basic black, blue and brown all purpose sock. White athletic socks were always around, but the youthful exuberance for the new knee-high athletic tube sock created a whole new industry in this area.

Because the sock did not have a knitted-in heel pouch, it could be produced a lot faster and less expensively. And while there has been somewhat of a return to the reciprocated or knitted-in heel in recent years, the tube sock helped add a revitalization to the entire sock market by bringing attention back to men's feet. Colors and patterns began to emerge as men began to break away from black and blue.

Today, we produce socks for what we call "lifestyles." There are everyday business socks, dress socks, casual socks, athletic socks, and subdivisions within each one of these categories. Just within athletic socks, there are socks for golf, tennis, jogging, bicycling, mountain climbing, walking, or just sitting around with your favorite team's logo on them. And all of this has expanded sock consumption over the last 20 years simply by expanding the man's sock wardrobe.

Marketing is now the key word for hosiery manufacturing. No longer can any successful hosiery company simply manufacture goods and then hope they sell. Now, we monitor consumer demand and then run home and produce the goods. The new generation of knitting equipment with computerized pattern changing and flexibility has allowed us to dramatically expand on these opportunities and make this transition.

This my also be a good resource.

LD

 

[Medvssa]

Very interesting read LD

When it comes to fishnet stocking history, I received this little snippet of info from Paul and I thought maybe other girls could be interested in too, so with his permission I share:

Fishnet stocking were certainly around in the 1800's I do know one collector/ dealer found a fishnet stocking in a pair of Victorian boots she bought.
As far as I can tell they were called open work stocking back then, which was a general term used to describe lace stockings or fancy stockings.
In my own opinion some time in the twentieth centaury a more descriptive name "fishnet" started to be used, and that would explain why it hard to find any distant history relating to fishnets hosiery.
I also have a feeling that in the 1800 fishnet were mainly worn by show girls on stages etc and these ladies wear not always looked upon then in the same light as they would be today.
I could be wrong with any of this.

 

[KittyT]

Medvssa, I just wash mine in any delicate wash liquid before the first wear and after wearing and that seems to help. It is important to wash (or rinse) between wears to keep the natural elasticity.

Also, if you wash in warm, be sure to rinse in cold water, as it will help shock them back into shape. [/QUOTE]

 

[KittyT]

I would suggest black and for night time only. If you want to try other colors you can but I don't believe it would be period correct,

Actually, I have never seen a pair of black vintage fishnets ("victory lace"). The only ones I have *ever* seen anywhere are dark brown.

 

[Brooksie]

Thanks Lady Day for the contribution of the article that you had found it was most helpful. Also thank you Medvssa for sharing the information that you had gotten from Paul. I had tried to find info regarding the history of fishnets several months ago - now I can understand why I never found what I was looking for.

 

[Brooksie]

Actually, I have never seen a pair of black vintage fishnets ("victory lace"). The only ones I have *ever* seen anywhere are dark brown.

Well, when I made that comment I was not sure how far back fishnets dated back to and I had never seen brown ones and the first ones I ever recall seeing decades ago were always black. PLUS I did state in what I wrote that I was no expert on the subject of the fishnets.

 

[Lady Day]

Here are a few more links on history from our grand contributor, Paul.

http://www.inspiration-from-vintage.info/nylon.htm

http://www.inspiration-from-vintage.info/silk.htm

http://www.inspiration-from-vintage.info/pantyhose.htm


LD