They were worn by hospital nurses in the seventies, by girls at their first communion, by ballet dancers in combination with dance leotards, or by sixties mod girls combined with skirt suits, loose shirts and a hairstyle. bob with very characteristic bangs. White socks are part of an inescapable collective imagination in Spanish society and, despite having banished them for decades, luxury brands are calling for their return to the streets.
One of its prescribers was Diana of Wales. Always appropriate to each situation, Lady Di was, without meaning to, a great trendsetter. Her outfits are still being analyzed, copied and auctioned at unheard of prices – last December one of her dresses achieved a new world record when it was auctioned for $1,148,080. The princess wore them either at a polo match in Windsor after the Ascot races or at Epsom Racecourse in a polka-dot print dress by Victor Edelstein. Despite her difficulty in combining them and running the risk of a questionable result, Diana resorted to white stockings without risk of error.
More than three decades have passed since then and now some luxury brands have displayed them again on the catwalk. Chanel’s last haute couture show in Paris was the most talked about. Virginie Viard presented her proposal for spring / summer 2024 with endless options to combine the controversial white tights. One of the favorites of the designer and right-hand woman of the late Karl Lagerfeld was the infallible black and white pairing. Giambattista Valli dared to wear tights of different colors for his fall/winter 2024 collection. The white tone had a place in three of his shows. Between feathers, lace and 3D roses, Palomo Spain presented in New York some tights in this tone, semi-close, that revealed a delicate floral print.
One of the possible reasons for this fortuitous craze for white stockings is none other than continuing the fascination with the coquette aesthetic, that is, a style focused on the hyperfeminization of fashion. First there were square-toed ballet flats, then came jeweled cardigans and hair bows, and now these tights have become a new extension of this trend.
But beyond the purely aesthetic, this highly controversial garment has a feminist past that responds to the name of the first supermodel in history: the British Twiggy. Her name was Lesley Hornby when she was born in 1949 in a north-west London suburb and her nickname corresponded to the way she was known at home when she was a child: “Twigs”, that is, skinny. At the age of fifteen she used to move in mod circles and with some of the most peculiar characters on the underground scene at that time. The fifties had been marked by the post-war period, with austerity and flag repression, and it was in the sixties when characters like Twiggy demanded more freedom and fun with less corseted clothes, that did not mark the curves, but rather showed a girlish image. as a game of seduction. This led to the use of very short straight dresses that were combined with those white stockings that recalled her childhood. An instrument with which a new generation expressed its ideals and rebellion, but also joy, fun and optimism as a leitmotiv of existence.
