Here are some interesting tit-bits from yesteryear!
Victorian woman considered even the merest glimpse of female
leg indecent –much more so if the leg was unclad. Right up to present times, no
fashion –conscious woman would go stockingless – despite a virtual ban on them
by the British government during the Second World War because of material
shortages. Even when supplies of wartime cotton and rayon stockings ran out,
many women used specially prepared leg make-up.
The first real attempt to abandon stockings was made during
the First World War by actress Gaby Deslys, mistress of King Manual of Portugal.
She shocked women and amused men by declaring that she would not wear stockings
again until Germany surrendered to the Allies. In the 1920’s Hollywood femme fatale,
Pola Negri went barelegged, and actress Joan Crawford discarded stockings for eveningwear
in 1926.
In 1934, after a long debate, the fashion weekly Sketch
concluded that ‘going barelegged is inartistic and tends to spoil the softness
of the skin.’ The British government ‘s official disapproval of stockings came
in 1942, when the Board of Trade warned that if women did not stop wearing them
in summer, there would be none by winter.
As late as the 1920’s, matrons in Melbourne, Australia
disapproved when model Jean Shrimpton appeared as guest of honour at Flemington
racecourse hatless, gloveless- and stockingless. Then in 1983, the Princes of
Wales attended a Government House party in Canberra with her elegant legs
covered only by a golden suntan; the barelegged look had finally won the royal
seal for approval. Nobody could argue with that.
Here is a tongue-in-the-cheek
joke just for you:
A young bride tells
her friend, “Paul keeps telling everyone he’s going to marry the most beautiful
girl in the world.”
“What a shame! And
after all the time you’ve been engaged!”
