The Harmony Club

Despite the efforts of the stocking manufacturers to diversify their wares, most women wear the same kind of stockings from morning till night and for every occasion. Attempts are made to launch a new mode in nylons twice a year, but while we may be told that the fashionable shade this season is apricot, cognac or antelope, and that seams are in or out of style (considered chic at one time, they were entirely abandoned and now have been rediscovered) – the fact is that stockings offer little scope for the imagination. The basic trend is for them to be more and more invisible.

Nevertheless, the patterned weave an bright-coloured stockings which Dior was the first to propose for country wear can add an amusing personal note to a sports ensemble; and knee-high patterned socks are gay and charming for very young girls.

However, it is wise and economical to resist the latest novelties for daily wear and to choose just two stocking shades each season: one for daytime and one for the evening. With city clothes, a neutral beige shade which will harmonise with the colour of every outfit is best; and for evening wear, a somewhat paler, sheerer stocking, whose reinforcements at the heels and toes will not show inside your evening shoes. Sheerness and strength, incidentally, depend upon the gauge and denier. The gauge refers to a closeness of the knit, and the higher the gauge number, the stronger the fabric; the denier is the weight of the yarn, and the higher the denier, the coarser, heavier, and stronger the stocking.

When shopping for stockings, you can eliminate the risk of an unpleasant surprise by selecting the colour in real daylight, because the artificial neon lighting of most department stores makes nylon shades seem paler than they really are.

You should avoid wearing dark or reddish nylons with a black ensemble, for the effect is rather drab and dreary; a neutral beige is the most attractive shade with black. While sun-tanned legs look stunning with a white or pastel summer dress nylons of the same hue are for some reason unattractive with white; again, you will do better to wear a slightly rosy or beige shade.

Sheer nylons are no longer a luxury, and there is only a slight difference between the cheaper and more expensive varieties. They are even less expensive if you take the precaution of buying six pairs at a time in the same shade, and of the correct foot size and leg length. And so there is no longer any excuse for wearing a stocking with a run in it, mended or not. An extra pair permanently kept in your handbag is good insurance in case of an untimely snag.

Unfortunately, one still sees too many twisted and baggy nylons wrinkling around the ankles and knees. Seamless nylons are more apt to bag than seamed ones, because the latter are usually fully-fashioned, that is to say, knitted flat and shaped by means of diminishing or increasing the stitches, instead of merely by increasing the tension, as is the case of the seamless kind. Even so, it is usually possible to avoid unsightly wrinkles by stretching the stocking as soon as the foot is in place, and not simply from the top.

A woman may consider her legs to be merely utilitarian appendages, but to men they are one of her most attractive features, and it would be foolish to neglect this special attraction. The legs of an elegant woman are as well groomed and as well dressed as the rest of her.

The foregoing article, is taken from the 2003 reprint of A Guide to Elegance by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux, originally written in 1964. The reprint is available from good bookshops (ISBN 0-0071-7825-5) and is highly recommended to all those who aspire to the elegance and good sense of a bygone era. Chapters in addition to "Stockings" reproduced above include Gloves, Grooming, Handbags and Lingerie. The original text is not, sadly, illustrated, but I am grateful to the superlative Vintage Stockings website for the vintage illustrations I have selected; the vintage advertisements are in The Collector's Collection.

I am a child of the 1970s or, more precisely, that decade is the decade from which my childhood memories are strongest. It is sometimes remarked as the decade that taste forgot, coming between the “Swinging Sixties” and the 1980s which saw a renaissance of various styles, including a wealth of hosiery variety, ranging from very sheer with seams (and remember the ankle bows made famous by the late Diana, Princess of Wales?) to the still currently ubiquitous black opaques. In the 1970s, those who wore stockings fell (I think) distinctly into one of two camps. Firstly, those for whom t***ts were an aberration and not worn in any circumstances (it is certainly the case that the Late Queen Mother and her Court fell into this category, indeed that lasted into the 21st Century!) The second category was those who, having perhaps worn t***ts with the shortest or minis, came to the obvious conclusion that as hems went down, stockings would return. The lady here, clearly, was of the former view!

I have obviously excluded from the foregoing two categories, those who wore stockings for purely sexual purposes (i.e. bedroom wear), and the many whose professional calling made it mandatory, for example, models or actresses (as to the latter, see below). The reason is that this article is really concerned with the day-to-day experience of someone seeing stockings being worn, in the street, on posters, in films, on television etc. There was, of course, an interesting tension between those men who enjoyed seeing as much leg as possible, and for whom the mini-skirt was a Godsend, but the inevitability of not wearing them with stockings, and on the other hand those who preferred women to wear stockings but at the same time would not want maxi-dresses to hide the entire leg!

A SHORT COMMERCIAL BREAK .....

What of that short period when stockings, girdles and the mini-skirt all overlapped each other quite literally?! This American advertisement from 1969 offered one, short-lived solution: special narrow-welted stockings which clipped directly onto the panty girdle leg, thus obviating the need for bulky suspenders.

Continuing with the U.S.A. in 1969, girdles were still seen as an essential part of a lady's wardrobe, even when their primary purpose was no longer to keep up the stockings, and they were being worn with all manner of garish t***ts!

But, perhaps, the most sophisticated solution of all came from the American firm which marketed Beauty Mist, a double-pack invention combining a thicker-yarn nylon panty with a rubber-gripped leg beneath which could be inserted the stockings which came in the same package. A unique form of 3-item t***ts, but at least offering stockings of a sort and something of interest to those wondering what was being worn under the skirt!

.... AND NOW BACK TO THE STORY

But, this monograph is about the 1970s, not the 1960s or 1980s, so let me get back to that rather strange decade! What did that decade mean for those with an interest in hosiery or, more precisely, stockings? 1967 or thereabouts had seen the dawn of t***ts (or, for our American friends, “pantyhose”, a word only marginally less offensive!) which went hand-in-hand with the mini-skirt. As that decade wore on and, certainly by the early 1970s, the vast majority of women who had previously been wearing stockings were wearing t***ts most if not all of the time. That is certainly my experience of the women in my life at that time. Skirt lengths rose and descended (from micro-mini, to maxi) and trouser-wearing became more popular amongst women in even formal settings, with the happy exception of a few areas (the Oxbridge sub fusc dress, the legal profession and Royal Ascot, for example, which held out against women wearing trousers until the beginning of the 21st Century). T***ts were here, however, to stay, regardless of skirt length (the reason for their ascendancy in the first place being the immodesty that would result from wearing stockings, suspenders and minis).

Stockings, however, lived on and are, happily, very much still with us today in the 21st Century! Not only stockings, as opposed to t***ts, but fully-fashioned stockings too, remained widely available throughout the 1970s. They could be found in the hosiery department of every department store, whether the large and famous such as Harrods or Selfridges, the smaller local stores such as Arding and Hobbs of Clapham Junction (now Debenhams) or Barber’s of Fulham (now gone). I remember these two latter very well, being a frequent visitor on parental shopping trips. Even walking through the hosiery departments of these stores was a remarkable experience even for a small boy!

The Barber’s hosiery department, for example, on the ground floor and effectively running the entire front of the ground floor (the prominent location and size of department said a lot about how important hosiery still was in those days, to all from schoolgirls to old ladies) had to be passed through regardless of where in the store one was headed. Seen here, a scene from Are You Being Served, a Seventies sit-com that could easily have been modelled on Barber's of Fulham!

There were ranks of upturned mannequin legs above the display cabinets, some with seams (“fully-fashioned” being a term that meant little to me at that time), others with heel and toe reinforcements (RHT) and others with patterns etc. RHT stockings were still very commonplace in the early 1970s and, indeed, RHT t***ts were also commonly available. Even shops like Woolworth's (a sample of their wares is pictured here) had large hosiery departments, and the virtual elimination of stockings in favour of t***ts happened only towards the middle of the decade, and then by the late '70s/early '80s, there was in any event a resurgence of interest in stockings.

Stockings also featured in many other areas, such as poster adverts, television commercials and, of course, “top shelf” magazines. Officially, of course, I would have had no access to the latter but “unofficially” I did, and magazines such as “Spick”, “Span”, “Search”, “Relate”, featured not only pages of stocking-clad ladies but also ran interesting articles or tantalising readers’ letters on the very subject of stockings versus t***ts! It was also quite possible to get unintended glimpses of stocking-tops in a variety of situations.

It is true that, as was revealed in a survey on the subject on the now defunct “Oliver and Annabelle’s Website” of the early 1990s, between about 1969 and 1978 hardly any major cinema release contained scenes with stockings! True, there were some notable exceptions, such as the superb Australian film “Walkabout” (1970) and “The Story of O” (1975), “Rosie Dixon Night Nurse” (1978), most of the others being period settings where stockings would obviously be worn, such as “The Last Picture Show” (1971 but set in the 1950s) and “The First Great Train Robbery” (1978 but set in Victorian times). What is remarkable is how many films or television programmes where stockings should have featured, but did not. For example, “Last Tango in Paris” (1972) and the “Dad’s Army” British television series set in World War Two are remarkable for their absence not only of seams but stockings altogether. The latter has an episode where a waitress falls down with legs in air to reveal nothing but black t***ts!

More likely sightings of stockings were to be found in the classic “Benny Hill” programmes so cruelly banished from British television in the politically-correct late 20th Century: hardly an episode went by without a nurse’s uniform being ripped off to show her black (often fully-fashioned) stockings in all their glory, or the famous final “chase” sequence where all manner of lovely ladies would lose various items of clothing until, in the end, the eponymous Benny was chased by a bevy of scantily-clad women. And who could forget the delectable Joanna Lumley as "Purdey" in The New Avengers, when hardly an episode went by without her stocking-clad legs in some misadventure or other? Towards the end of that decade the “Kenny Everett Television Show” often featured stocking-clad dancers in the form of “Hot Gossip”.

But what of real life? I certainly have memories of women in my life remaining true to stockings well into the 1970s. Close relatives, schoolmistresses and others continued to wear RHT (whether stockings or t****ts I could only swear in a few cases, for obvious reasons!) stockings. One of my earliest schoolday memories, and this would be from around 1970, is of crawling around on the floor playing with toys and the close-up sight of the teacher’s open-back sandals revealing her RHT foot very close to my eye-level, and the colour being “American Tan” which was all the rage for much of the 1970s. I also well remember various uniformed ladies wearing fully-fashioned stockings throughout the 1970s – nurses, traffic wardens and Salvation Army officers.

But the 1970s was also the decade that saw a change in the yarn most commonly worn. The 1940s-1960s were the epitome of plain-knit nylon (i.e. like Aristoc Harmony Points) but through the 1960s there came a variety of yarns, such as micromesh, Celon, Agilon, run-resist, and crepe. There were a multitude of names for these different yarns: by the late 1960s, most had been available at one time or another in both FF and RHT stocking styles. During the 1970s, many of these also became available in t***ts as well.

For sheer variety of what was available (forgive that pun, please!) I would suggest that the 1970s were the best decade of the whole 20th Century. A whole book could be written on the various types of yarn available but allow me to illustrate the point by reference to just one yarn: Micromesh: this was available in stockings and t***ts, each in full-fashioned, RHT and vision heel, and each again available in either stretch or non-stretch yarns and either plain or in various patterns. That is in total 24 varieties of this one yarn! Multiply that by the various manufacturers that still existed in the 1970s (almost entirely British), no wonder even small department stores had such huge hosiery departments!

Admittedly, the trend as the 1970s wore on was for fewer and fewer women to wear stockings. There were some notable stocking strongholds, such as Her Majesty’s Forces, the nursing profession and the Salvation Army, and even a few schools required stockings to be worn as part of their uniform (Australia seems to have held out longest!) but wherever there was a hosiery shop or counter, stockings (and, indeed, fully-fashioned) could be found aplenty. There immediately springs to mind a lovely shop on the corner of the King’s Road, Chelsea, which was a lingerie/hosiery boutique (long before Sock Shop and Knickerbox were thought of), which invariably sported at least a pair of fully-fashioned stockings on the mannequin legs on display. (Some may say the accompanying picture has a Sixties feel about it but, according to the archive from where it came, this picture was taken in 1970.)

Naturally, a certain risqué connotation came to bear whenever stockings were mentioned (many will remember that classic episode of “The Good Life” where a theatrical production required Margot to wear black stockings – the very phrase “black stockings” attracting everyone’s attention - and poor old Jerry’s excitement at the prospect was soon stamped upon by his wife!). But neither the word nor the fact of wearing stockings actually ever quite made them unacceptable in polite society! Many will also remember the scene from “Everything you wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask” (1972) where the elderly transvestite dons his party-hostess’ dress and lingerie in her bedroom: even that respectable conservative middle-class American lady had stockings and suspenders available!

There was one other likely, even inevitable, venue for seeing fully-fashioned stockings. In those days it did not have a name but now it would be called “retro” something or other. The large-scale period re-enactors were less common then, but the Rock and Roll circuit had a large and loyal following, whose devotees would attire themselves in a way of which their 1950s’ forbears would have been proud. The Teddy Boys and Girls were (and still are) a dedicated group of followers of that musical genre, and everything associated with it, not least the frilly hoop skirts and the inevitable dancing to which the music leads. In the late 1970s, I happened to be playing hide-and-seek with a friend whose older sister had a Teddy Boyfriend. When hiding in her bedroom I was much more fascinated by the black fully-fashioned stockings carelessly discarded about the room than I was about being caught! A few months later, I attended their wedding, and he was fully-kitted out in Ted gear, while the bride wore white – but with white fully-fashioned stockings of course!

Of course any true fully-fashioned aficionado is bound to hark back to the glory days of the ’40s, ’50s and early ’60s but it is my view that, for variety and the tantalising “unlikely” opportunity (such as the hide-and-seek find mentioned above), as a decade the 1970s cannot be bettered. Admittedly, the 1970s reaped the rewards of the seeds sewn in the late 1960s (mini-skirts, t****ts and then, worse still, trousers) the decade still had the vast majority of women wearing sheer hosiery. Most important of all, there was still a widespread availability of fully-fashioned stockings in every high street. A number of well-known store even continued their own brand-names, such as Debenhams (seen here), Marks & Spencer and Dorothy Perkins.

They were neither the expensive specialised commodity that they now are, nor were they exclusively associated with sex – they were just one of the many varieties of hosiery commonly available. Thus, the likelihood of any lady (young or old) wishing to look smart and perhaps echo something she had seen her mother wear a few years earlier, was reasonably strong. There was even a strong likelihood of fully-fashioned stockings in some specialised markets, such as heavy-gauge patterns (sometimes made of wool, cotton or lace) and, of course, support stockings, as seen here.

My abiding memory of the mid-1970s was a poster that we had on our kitchen wall, from an amateur production of “Cabaret” which involved some family friends. It was a stylised representation of some of the Kit Kat dancers, kitted in corsets and carefully-drawn fully-fashioned stockings. My parents didn’t regard it as particularly risqué, nor did they imagine the pleasure it gave me every morning looking at it. Stockings had not yet become something exceptional – indeed my mother still had a drawer full of them!

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A trip down Memory Lane a.k.a. Oxford Street.

Let me begin with a confession – this piece might just as well be titled “An odyssey of 1978” or “An odyssey of 1980”, memory being a fickle jade, and having best guessed that as the year in which my awakening passion for nylon stockings really took off. True to say that, prior to this, I had a growing awareness of nylon stockings (the difference between stockings and t***ts being something of earliest memory, going right back to the late 1960s, but that’s another story….) and, more especially, the existence of fully-fashioned stockings. It’s true that I did not actually know that term in 1979 (or whenever), but I did know that there was a difference between stretch stockings with seams, and those that were sheer and not stretchy which also had seams. The wholly different method of manufacture was not something that I knew then, merely the difference in quality between “stretchy seamed” and “non-stretchy seamed”.

As soon as school term gave way to the Summer holidays, I was determined to acquire a pair! Now, to disappoint those who expect me now to regale a tale of finding a pair of fully-fashioned nylons in a laundry basket, or finding a pair fluttering on a convenient washing-line, I am going to disappoint you! I had a small amount of pocket money, and decided to head for the most obvious place: the London department stores in Oxford Street. I remember visiting most of the stores there – John Lewis, Selfridges and Debenhams but, for whatever reason, the hosiery department that would see my purchase was to be D.H. Evans.

Although I knew what I wanted, the paradox is that my first ever purchase of stockings was a pair (and I’ll never forget the name or the packaging) of Aristoc Illusion seamed stockings. Aristoc but not, I hear the experts amongst you cry, fully-fashioned stockings at all! But, so good was the packaging, to the untrained eye they LOOKED like the sheer seamed stockings that I wanted. Of course, I could hardly open the package and start examining it in the shop. So, I plumped for what, to me, seemed the most obvious package, plucked up the courage to queue at the till and pay for it, muttering something about needing it for a school play! The checkout girl did make the comment that, “You do know that these are worn with suspenders….” – oh yes, I certainly knew that!

Anyway, disappointment was to be my first experience when I got the package home and opened it: these were, of course, stretchy stockings with a false seam sewn in for decorative effect, and what looked like the point heel of genuine fully-fashioned stockings was, again, purely decorative. I had seen stockings with a finishing loop, the guarantee of being fully-fashioned, in some of the “top-shelf” magazines I had seen, but that to my uneducated eye meant little – I recall at one time thinking it was just a defect in the stocking, akin to a ladder! I had also seen (and handled) fully-fashioned stockings, since my mother’s hosiery drawer had contained several pairs. So, I knew the difference, but not what to ask for.

So, thwarted at the first attempt, I needed to try again. This time, I plumped for Swan and Edgar at Piccadilly Circus. Sadly, that shop is no longer there, being in the building between Piccadilly and Regent Street, now occupied by Tower Records (or whatever it is now called). The hosiery department there was on the ground floor, in the shadow of Eros, and there were staff on duty there. Rather nervously, I approached one of the ladies and (still ignorant of the terminology, let alone brand names) asked something like, “I would like to buy a pair of stockings with seams – not stretchy ones, but those with real seams”. She immediately directed me to the rack containing Aristoc Harmony Points, and the love affair began! I picked a black pair (shoe size didn’t matter that much but I plumped for 9½”, being a middle size amongst those I saw on display). I had bought my first ever pair of fully-fashioned stockings! Little did I then know that it would, over the years, be joined by several thousand others, but like one’s first true love, that pair will always hold a special place in my heart. I still have it, complete with Swan and Edgar price label.

On the left is a photograph which I just had to include, because it involves a certain amount of nostalgia for me: wrong decade (1960s), wrong shop (Peter Jones, Sloane Square) and wrong department (school uniform): but it does remind me of my own school uniform-fitting trips to that shop, passing through the hosiery department en route, but best of all being fitted by a “posh” buxom young lady (whose plummy accent I can still hear almost 30 years later!) who invariably wore navy blue RHT stockings with open-backed shoes. Not quite fully-fashioned, but a treat for a growing schoolboy nevertheless! I think that the picture still captures the atmosphere I experienced in the 1970s. (Is that a glimpse of stocking-top peeping below the store assistant's unifom mini-dress, and the outline of suspenders just about visible?!)

It would be an exaggeration to say that I spent that Summer visiting as many hosiery departments as I could (if only….) but I did manage to visit just about every central London department store that I could think of. Many which no longer exist, like Barker’s of Kensington and Barber’s of Fulham – in fact my latent interest in stockings must in part have its origins there, having been a frequent visitor there as a small boy with my mother and being fascinated by the army of mannequin legs atop the display cabinets in that most traditional of shops. Also Harrod’s, the old Civil Service Stores in the Strand, and Army and Navy Stores in Victoria Street: this was to be a scene of near-miss encounter with my school’s librarian who happened to be in the hosiery department with her daughter and, more pertinently for this article, a very strange purchase.

The “experts” amongst readers will immediately recognise the Brettles packaging shown here. Brettles used this lovely packaging for a number of different brands of stockings during the 1970s, ranging from 20 denier run resist (rumoured to be much favoured by the uniformed services, such as the Police) and ordinary plain-knit stockings. On that day in Army and Navy Stores, the packaging caught my eye and, more interestingly, its contents more so: fully-fashioned stockings in a “Chestnut” colour. Having now collected stockings for well over 20 years, and having amassed a collection of several thousand pairs, I have NEVER again come across Brettles fully-fashioned stockings in such packaging. Now, I stand to be corrected (on enquiries@harmonyclub.co.uk) but it is my view that someone (a member of the thrift-conscious hosiery department staff?) had repackaged these stockings! I am quite convinced that it was actually Aristoc Harmony Points that were repackaged, since the pair is identical to their Gentle Smoke variety in every way. I do not know why that would have happened, other than to venture the suggestion that the pair might have been a return and this was spare packaging available (tellingly the packaging itself made no mention of being “fully fashioned”) and, to be frank, the Brettles packaging is rather more attractive than the bland Aristoc packaging of that era. Brettles must have regarded the packaging very highly since, as I have already mentioned, the same packaging was used for a variety of different brands, and over many years.

The foregoing is something of a personal memoir, of that first ever purchase of a treasured pair of Aristoc Harmony Points. I have searched high and low for some relevant illustrations to accompany this – try as I have, I found no pictures of the old D.H. Evans, Swan and Edgar or Barber’s stores. Somewhere there must be a Website devoted to old department stores (there is a site devoted to 1950s’ mail order catalogue pages, and even a marvellous site devoted purely to “greasy spoon” cafés). Any information would be gladly welcomed.

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For those who know anything about fully-fashioned stockings, the origins of the name of this Club will need no introduction. The famous and celebrated (possibly the most famous and celebrated of all time) stockings: Aristoc’s Harmony Point stockings. They were manufactured between the 1950s and early 1990s, when the sad decision was made (allegedly in the face of “declining sales” to cease manufacture). As a side note, I would venture to suggest that the overall numbers of fully-fashioned stockings for sale now, both hoarded vintage examples and those still made on the original machinery, and widely available on-line and even in an increasing number of shops now) are greater than at any time since the early 1960s. But, in the minds of Aristoc, that was a necessary commercial decision, and the last British commercial production of fully-fashioned stockings ended.

Over the years, Aristoc provided a number of different packaging for the Harmony Points, which were actually marketed as just “Harmony” at one stage.

But whilst, by far, Harmony Points were the most well-known variety, they were by no means the only brand of fully-fashioned stockings made by Aristoc. Aristoc also, at different times, were responsible for manufacturing a number of other fully-fashioned stockings, in a variety of yarns (plain-knit such as Harmony Points, sheer mesh such as Harmony, the eponymous run-resist & run-proof, and stretch nylon such Dulcima) and in different deniers, ranging from 12 right through to opaque 60.
The packaging on the left shows one version of the famous Aristoc lilies, a feature of Aristoc packaging in one form or another for many years.

Clearly, as fashions changed, specific markets were aimed at. Who, for example, would seek to market fully-fashioned stockings at the teenage market nowadays?! Well, that is exactly what Aristoc did in the 1950s/60s with their Top Teens brand. This brand was evidently successful and lasted long enough to undergo at least two packaging revamps!

At the other extreme, who in the marketing-conscious 21st Century would market hosiery simply by reference to a seemingly arbitrary number sequence? Aristoc clearly felt that numbers would appeal to the stocking-purchasing ladies of the 1960s, since a range of stockings with esoteric branding such as “222”, “3193” was developed. It may be that these numbers referred to something, but I am unaware of what this was!

Aristoc, unlike some other famous manufacturers, did not seem to have a discernible pattern to its branding policy. By way of contrast, Bear Brand, for example named its entire range after the different states of the U.S.A., and Morley used the names of famous racecourses. At one time, Aristoc was obviously using English place names (viz. Ascot, Beverley, Cotswold, Cheviot, Cheltenham, Goodwood, Grosvenor, Lansdowne and Oxford – interestingly some of these were also famous racecourses!).

They were simultaneously using an enchanting series of names of no particular origin (viz. Cameo, Caprice, Corista, Dulcima, Mirabelle, Mistique, Pierrette, Shareen, Selina, Tango and Vivette), as well as the already-mentioned number series (222, 333, 444, 555 and 3193).

Aristoc were also running a series with obviously descriptive names (viz. Run-Proof, Run Resist, Sheer Mesh, Sheer Point Heel (seen left) and Undergrads – the latter term being used to describe “seconds” and covered a number of their brands which were simply re-packed under that branding to distinguish them from the first-quality variety.

In a commendable (but sadly doomed) effort to reinvigorate the market for fully-fashioned stockings, Aristoc (as well as some other manufacturers) resorted to some specialised versions of fully-fashioned stockings. In the 1970s, they designed a variety which was a beige stocking, but with foot and heel reinforcements of a different colour, and branded “Sheer Mischief”. I am not sure how widely available they were or, indeed, how successful they were, but it is certainly true to say that they now fetch very high prices indeed!

Having varied the foot colour, the next step in the path of novelty adopted by Aristoc was to vary the seam colour. Many manufacturers had, even when fully-fashioned stockings were commonplace, introduced various seam colours, invariably using darker thread, so as to make the seam more pronounced. Aristoc took this to its ultimate: the lurex seam! There was a time in the 1970s/80s when lurex stockings had a loyal following amongst the disco’ sorority, but how popular this particular brand became is unknown (any info’ or even photos of them being worn would be much welcomed here!).

Another attempt to create a niche market was the Aristoc Limited Edition of the late 1980s: basically Harmony Points repackaged into tissue paper within a box and marked as “hand finished”. Although the final product looked very impressive and attracted a price premium (if memory serves correctly they were at least double the price of the still-available Harmony Points), for the connoisseur the irony was that there was hardly anything unique about hand-finishing fully-fashioned stockings (that was one of the economic reasons for ceasing their production!) and the packaging was what the fortunate customer of the 1960s and earlier would have taken for granted! Sadly, by the 1980s, such quality of packaging had become extinct and thus allowed this to be marketed as something special….. Sadly, this was to be the swansong of fully-fashioned stockings made by Aristoc since it was a year or two later that the production of Harmony Points, let alone the more esoteric varieties, came to an end. Some may criticise Aristoc by saying that they should have stuck to making and marketing the stable product, Harmony Points, and not diced with the costly gimmickry described here but, clearly, that was not to be, and the baby was thrown out with the bathwater.

So, whilst Aristoc Harmony Points were a classic, and their loss remains much mourned, there was a wide variety of choice of fully-fashioned stockings from Aristoc. Undoubtedly Harmony Points secured a wide and loyal following, and will retain their devotees in this Club and beyond, it will remain a matter of conjecture whether, had Aristoc continued manufactured some of those brands which must have been competing with Harmony Points at one time or another, some of these would have remained equally popular. Who knows, had that been the case, this Club may have been called the “3193 Club”. Perish the thought!

What might have been: the 3193 Club?!

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"Fully-Fashioned" - what does this term mean?

So what exactly are fully-fashioned stockings, and how do they differ from other stockings. The terminology means that the stockings are fully- as opposed to not fully- fashioned. But what does this mean. Are there stockings that are just fashioned then? Yes, although rather unusual and rare, there are!
Fully-fashioned basically means that the piece of nylon comprising the stocking has been knitted flat, and the edges (imagine it like a piece of cigarette paper) instead of being straight and parallel have been shaped, i.e. “fashioned” to the contour of a leg. So, when sewn together the “tube” that is formed is not regular and straight (as in a cigarette paper rolled into a cigarette), so the stocking fits the exact leg contour.

Stitching

     How is this contour effect achieved? Well, it’s not as simple as simply cutting the sides of the sheet of nylon into the contour of a leg! The way this contour is achieved is by varying the number of stitches at various points along the length of the leg (this can just be seen on the picture here). Although over the years, especially with the sheerest of nylon, this has become a very finely-honed art, and is achieved almost invisibly, if one looks very closely at two places on a fully-fashioned stocking, i.e. at the lower part of the calf where it broadens, and at the upper thigh area (a few inches below the welt) one will find these “stitch marks”. This is where the nylon has been “fashioned” by adding extra stitches at these two sections, to make the stocking wider at these areas, so that when sewn together the leg contour shape appears.
     There is an additional process that is applied to sheer fully-fashioned stockings known as “boarding” which involves placing the stocking, once complete and seamed, over a wooden (or metal) shaped leg and applying heat: this has the effect of ensuring that the stocking is leg-shaped at the front as well as the rear. When the stocking is removed it is then flattened and, after careful quality-control inspection, packed ready for sale.
     There are two parts of the stocking which call for particular attention, and are really also the hallmarks of fully-fashioned stockings: the top and bottom.

Finishing loop

Dealing with the top first, virtually all fully-fashioned stockings have a thicker welt. Actually, it is usually quadruple-thickness: the nylon yarn is knitted at double-thickness at the top 12 inches (or thereabouts) and then the top 6 inches (or thereabouts) is turned down and the seamed like the rest of the leg: BUT with one difference: the nylon that is turned down is NOT seamed, or not for its entire length (practice varied with manufacturers). It is this that provides the characteristic “keyhole” or, more accurately termed “finishing loop”, which on a stocking when worn will look like a circular opening on one layer of the welt, outside or inside, depending on whether the stocking is worn insider out or not. To the untrained eye, this is the most obvious proof that the stocking is fully-fashioned: without a “finishing loop” the stocking cannot be fully-fashioned. So, forget what so less scrupulous traders might have you believed about what they are trying to sell: if it ain’t got the loop it ain’t fully-fashioned!

Heel

Finally, and for most people seeing a stocking on a fully-clothed lady, this will be the second thing that attracts the eye (after the seam, that is!), there is the reinforcement to the heel, foot and toes. ON the vast majority of stockings this involves double thickness nylon that is knitted from the toes, along the foot and part of the way up the ankle. To the untrained eye, most fully-fashioned stockings will look very similar in this area, but there are many different variations of the precise shaping, knitting and heel style adopted by the many manufacturers. The most obvious demarcation is between the two major heel shapes: square “Cuban” or pointed “French” or “European”, i.e. the way in which the reinforcement ends at the ankle. Historically, the square heel was more common and remained so especially in the U.S.A., whilst the pointed heel was a British and European development presumably (and I stand to be corrected!) to mirror the stiletto heels that became fashionable during the 1950s and beyond. The square heel itself had many varieties, some were very pointed at the edge and some were almost rounded, and some were very long up the leg whilst others were very short.

The point heel itself had different variations – some had very smooth edging whilst others had a more “jagged” appearance to fit in with the rows of stitching shaping the contour: this is noticeably so on Aristoc Harmony Points but not on Aristoc Oxfords, for example, which had very smooth edging.

Colour
     Just as at present hosiery manufacturers vie with each other for new gimmicks to attract customers, at the height of fully-fashioned stocking popularity (roughly the period 1940 to 1960) a number of different features were added to them. Firstly and most obviously, colour: whilst today the vast majority of stockings customers have to satisfy themselves with “flesh” or “beige” or “tan” colours (ignoring for the moment obvious other colours such as black or blue). In the 1940s and 1950s hosiery manufacturers produced hundreds of different shades of “flesh”, with thousands of names as weird and wonderful as “Spice”, “Touch of Mink”, “Little Colour”, “Sable”, “London Mist”, “Mayfair” and of course the famous Aristoc “Allure”.
    Then, of course, there were the basic “colour” varieties, the most common being black and brown. White appears to have been more common in the U.S.A., especially for nurses’ uniforms. Just about every conceivable colour was represented in the ranges of stockings available, although I doubt that any one manufacturer had as wide a range at the same time as are now available from the various “retro” (not a term that is meant in a critical way - far from it!) manufacturers such as Gio at Sheer Temptation or those from Touchable. So, in a way, this is indeed “progress”!

Tops

Over the years, various types of stocking-top have been used, varying between sheer or very thick nylon, and sometimes being subjected to an entirely different process, for example, to make it more stretchy, so as to more easily accommodate a fatter thigh and aid comfort. Occasionally, different colours for the stocking-tops were used also. On the left we can see an unembellished stocking-top, which is just the double-thickness yarn folded down part-way, still leaving an inch or so of "afterwelt", i.e. just the double-thickness yarn.

Seam Colour

The next feature was to vary the thread used for the seams. These sometimes had a dark or black thread inserted into the multi-filament thread used, or the entire multi-filament itself was of a dark colour: the more filaments of a dark colour used, or the darker the thread, the more pronounced the seam.

Different Heels

Then came various forms of “decoration” for the heel reinforcement: these might take the form of an additional line of dark yarn providing an additional “border” around the heel reinforcement, or a particular “zig-zag” or other shape to the reinforcement, thus making it more pronounced. An Aristoc “gimmick” of the 1970s was their Sheer Mischief range: basically beige Harmony Points but with the foot/heel reinforcement made of a different colour.
The culmination of the two previous features was the famous "blackfoot" (seen LEFT) stocking, a beige stocking which had both black seams and the foot/heel reinforcement in black. Fortunately, thanks to those dedicated retro manufacturers, these are still available.

On the left can be seen an "OUTLINE" heel, which shows the extra "border" around the edge of the foot and heel reinforcement. Unlike, for example, the "stitch marks" which are an integral part of the fashioning of the nylon (see above), this extra stitching is purely for decorative effect. Even more elaborate examples exist, for example black stitching surrounding beige nylon heel reinforcements. Of course, to the connoisseur, the subtlety of this "decoration" is sublime, and far preferale to something as garish as the multiplicity of patterned hosiery which comes and goes according to fashion dictates in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries!

Embellishment

There were also other decorative embellishments, such as diamante butterflies at the ankle, or diamante seams or bows sewn into the seam at the ankle (Aristoc actually made such a version in the 1980s, seen left). Even politicians got in on the act: I have seen a pair of American fully-fashioned stockings from the 1953 Presidential Election campaign with the lettering “I like Ike” sewn into the ankle side. (“Ike” being the nickname of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the famous wartime general, who was elected that year).

Conclusion and Part 2 to come…..

In the foregoing, I have attempted to cover the most basic features of fully-fashioned stockings. There is so much more to write: I haven’t even mentioned “fashioned stockings” yet! Also, the mysteries of denier, gauge, after-welt (of which there were many varieties), welt-printing (some of which was very elaborate and even included artwork), various yarn types and many other features have not been mentioned. These will be the subject of “Part 2” which I shall write when I have the time!
For the present, however, I hope that the casual reader will have learnt something, and that the “expert” will have found my comments accurate (corrections will be most welcome). I have attempted to illustrate some of the things described: anyone with appropriate illustrations (photos or drawings) is most welcome to send them to the same address, and I shall be delighted to include them, with appropriate accreditation if required. Moreover, anyone with their own Website covering any of this material to which the owner would like a link is most welcome to contact me: enquiries@harmonyclub.co.uk

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            Members of this Club are probably the best qualified group in the whole World to offer advice to film and TV studio wardrobe departments on the correct legwear for their productions. No doubt Members would have been pleased, had they been asked, to offer free advice, so as to avoid some of the more common errors that have been perpetuated on celluloid and video tape!

            Amongst the most prolific offenders was the BBC in the 1970s, for whom, presumably, the wearing of stockings even for period dramas was considered too risqué. For example, there’s an episode of Dad’s Army where a tea lady is mistaken for a fifth columnist and in the struggle with Mainwaring’s men, her skirt rides up to show nothing more authentic than tan-coloured t***ts! Or, the episode where the Yanks “invade” Walmington, and Mrs. Pike is seen swooning over “nylons” that look no more authentic than 1970s’ 60-denier Aristoc Cotswold crepe stockings. Even Walker’s “spiv” didn’t seem to manage to get hold of a proper pair of nylons during the whole War!

            More happily, ’Allo ’Allo did manage to provide a feast of seamed stockings which, in the earlier episodes at least, were genuine fully-fashioned, of the variety whence this Club gets it name. Who can ever forget Helga's (click on her name for a pleasant surprise) corsetry and straightening her seams at Herr Flick’s command?! The later episodes, however, had some of the waitresses (especially the short blonde girl) in fake-seams, but at least the thought was there. The precursor to that series, Secret Army, was also a feast of sheer stockings, worn by all those Belgian resistance girls/waitresses at the Café Candide but, the true pedant may ask, were poor Belgian girls in wartime Brussels really likely to come across sheer fully-fashioned stockings so easily?

A strange, if pleasing, example of “wishful thinking” came in the 1978 film The First Great Train Robbery, set in the 1880s, a period somewhat before the sheer black stockings and suspenders seen adorning the legs of the lovely Lesley-Ann Down. At the other end of the spectrum, what was Sally Kellerman (seen here on the left) as a U.S. Army officer in M*A*S*H* (the movie) doing wearing stockings as late as 1969? ADDED NOTE: (December 2005): THANKS TO THOSE WHO HAVE POINTED OUT THE AUTHOR'S ERROR: M*A*S*H* WAS SET IN THE KOREAN WAR OF THE 1950s, NOT THE VIETNAM WAR OF THE 1960s-70s! SO, MISS KELLERMAN'S HOSIERY IS TOTALLY IN PERIOD AND CORRECT!

The rather disturbing film Rosemary’s Baby was released in 1967, and towards the beginning Mia Farrow is seen to remove her stockings, worn with an improbably short mini-skirt of the era. Perhaps the apparent disparity arises from the fact that most of the filming was done in 1965, when stockings were still almost universally worn, despite the encroaching minis. Another 1967 film, The Graduate will be ingrained on many of our minds, even if the stocking-clad leg in the famous poster was that of Linda Gray and not that of Anne Bancroft: one can still almost hear the rustling of that RHT micromesh!

The leg in the top-left picture is that of Linda Gray (of "Mrs. J.R. Ewing", in Dallas, fame, whilst Anne Bancroft famously seduces "innocent" Dustin Hoffman in the hotel bedroom. Just why Linda Gray's legs were used for one scene (and the poster), remains open to conjecture.

             Now, it would be churlish to look a gift-horse in the mouth, but when giving even a brief summary of errors of the past, how could one forget the St. Trinian films? Marvellous though all those sixth-formers looked in their impossibly short skirts (the first two being well over 10 years earlier than the mini-skirt era) and black fully-fashioned stockings, they could hardly be representative of schoolgirl wear even for that time! A whole mythical industry a la “School Disco” in London and elsewhere seems to have resulted!

            One of my favourite films is The Shuttered Room (Blood Island in the U.S.A.) of 1967 starring Carol Lynley and Oliver Reed at his most menacing. The curiosity here is why there was a box of sheer RHT stockings in Carol’s car, when she was clearly wearing modern t***ts with her mini-skirt throughout the film. As those who have seen the film will remember, those stockings directly lead to the murder of a local girl!

            Although it can’t be called a “mistake”, since it must have been a deliberate wardrobe mistress’ decision (or even that of the actress), one of the most unexpected and pleasing sights of fully-fashioned stockings is in a near contemporary film, Who Dares Wins (1982) is on the legs of terrorist leader Ingrid Pitt: even her stocking-tops can be seen in the climactic struggle right at the end of the film. And an even curiouser sampling of fully-fashioned stockings can be seen in that cult Australian film of 1970, Walkabout, starring Jenny Agutter – the stockings aren’t, however on her legs but that of a lady prospecting in the Outback…….