And 1959 is the year when Allen Gant of Glen Raven Mills, a textile factory in North Carolina, creates the garment in a few years will revolutionize women's fashion along with Mary Quant miniskirt .
Twenty years before Wallace H. Carothers invented nylon, which lands on the clothing market with the reputation of a fabric 'as strong as steel and delicate as a spider's web ' . The first nylon and lycra later, make the fortune of pantyhose , whose success will know no pushups. Between the birth of nylon fashion hosiery and the boom in the second half the Second World War . The synthetic fiber invented by Carothers is used to produce parachutes and American women are invited to donate their nylons army. It 'was the famous episode of the actress Betty Grable that if the parade , putting them at auction for 40 thousand dollars to be allocated to the military. A waiver ' painful ' for American women : a survey in the post-war to the question ' What you missed the most , 30% answer ' men ' and 70% ' nylon ' .
Devoid of erotic charge than corset and garter belt, is the accusation that men turn to fashion hosiery. It is probably true, if you consider that other types of stockings worn by some stars of the big screen have tickled the imagination of generations of males, such as Sophia Loren slips in front of an ecstatic Marcello Mastroianni , improvising a provocative strip tease in ' Yesterday , Today and Tomorrow ' in 1963. Or those that Anne Bancroft decided to seduce a young Dustin Hoffman takes off with slow movements in the movie 'the Graduate' by Mike Nichols.
Years before women's legs on the small and big screen were covered with thick fashion hosiery , like those worn by the Kessler twins, blond and Teutonic darlings of the public Italian television fifties. The fashion hosiery revolutionize ' women's fashion giving more' momentum ' also to the career of actresses, dancers and showgirls.
At the end of the eighties it was the turn of the striptease stunning Kim Basinger in ' Nine and a half weeks ' to make the formidable flying advertising to women's stockings that will benefit , in terms of the market, even pantyhose.
Since the nineties the fashion hosiery began to undergo a transformation under the influence of technology. While remaining an essential accessory for millions of women, stockings made of synthetic fibers have made a huge effort to try to meet the many different needs. Here then land on the market fashion hosiery , those anti- static , and even anti- fatigue, anti-mosquito, anti-cellulite, anti-bacterial . And then the fashion hosiery that ' massages ' , the one that shaves , the one that moisturizes the skin , with what effect ' baking ' on the buttocks, even suntan pantyhose . A real paradise of stockings for all tastes and for all budgets. Also practically infinite range of colors and patterns: camouflage, python, leopard, decorated with applications, Scottish, lace or brocade.
Italy is the world's leading manufacturer of pantyhose: 250 companies alone account for 70% of the hosiery sold in Europe, with an annual turnov of irony and that was not successful . But recently it has been enjoying a comeback in the hosiery market.
FASHION SEGMENT: Hosiery
