THE TELEGRAPH: Selfridges is selling a new range of tights for men dubbed “mantyhose” in response to soaring demand for the leg wear.
The tights, priced £70 a pair, are made by lingerie brand Unconditional and are a tough 120 denier thickness.
However, those hoping to recreate the Errol Flynn look will be disappointed – they are only available in black, beige and charcoal.
The boom in sales represents a comeback for tights in men’s wardrobes after a two-century hiatus. >>> | Thursday, September 24, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: As Selfridges predicts a surge in men wearing tights, Christopher Howse plans to leave that particular trend to the history books and stick to trousers.
If wearing shorts were not bad enough, now we are told that tights for men are back. “We expect men to be wearing them,” said someone from Selfridges, “not only as a way to give legs an extra boost of warmth on the chilliest nights, but as a true style statement.” A statement that costs £70 a kick.
Well, I know that nothing can be too absurd for fashion to impose, but men in tights are an abomination, a hissing and a by-word. Our legs are not made for them, nor our loins, if loins is the word I’m looking for.
There is some recognition of this in the fashion-dictators’ serving-suggestion for the new tights or “mantyhose”: that they should be covered up by shorts or skirts.
Skirts! Come off it. They’ve tried that one before, and, like manbags, no one with a sense of humour wore them. The only exception I can think of is the late Roderick Gradidge, an architect who was to be seen at the Opera House formally dressed in a black pleated skirt, with his pigtail tied in a dark ribbon.
If Gordon Brown, averse to conventional formal dress, wishes to jazz up his image, then black tights and a pelmet skirt at his next Guildhall speech might be just the thing, as a last desperate throw.
It is not as if men in tights are unprecedented. If, in Mel Brooks’s 1993 film, Robin’s followers sing, “We’re men in tights / We roam around the forest looking for fights,” the satire was not so much against medieval outlaws as the Errol Flynn school of historical drama, from 1938.
Before the advent of nylon, or even elastic, tights was a word for men’s clothes, not women’s. The change is quite recent. “Who’s our friend in the tights?” Steerforth asks Dickens’s David Copperfield. The answer is Mr Micawber.
Mr Micawber’s nether regions were encased in tight-fittting trousering, with, I think, a strap under the instep. Before his day, gentlemen wore breeches and stockings. Indeed the Duke of Wellington was barred from his club, the Athenaeum, for wearing trousers, though it is hard to think he was barred for long. I wonder how the club would respond now to a (male) member turning up in skirt and tights. >>> Christopher Howse | Friday, September 25, 2009
Mantyhose / Pantyhose for Men >>>
