A tight spot

How am I wearing these again? And enjoying it.

Oct 06, 2023

I’m wearing spotty tights. Dotty, spotty, polka dotty sheer tights. The likes of which haven’t been on my legs since about 1985 – and I’m loving it.

They make me feel light-hearted and fancy free. They’re silly and fun and doin’ no harm to none.

And I particularly like that they are paired with my most funky Nike-does-Memphis-furniture Post Modern trainers, rather than the suede low-vamp, cone-heel, wannbe Maud Frizon pumps I wore them with last time.

When you goes back, you have to switch it up hard, or it’s weird Sliding Doors fancy dress.

I do know I’m not blazing a fresh trail here. Sheer spotty tights have been ‘back in’ for a while – indeed I bought this pair about two years ago in H&M – but it’s only just felt like the right time to wear them today.

What’s made the difference? Couple of things,

The weather is just beginning to cool a little around the edges and it would be just a bit too breezy up my skirt at the start and end of the day for bare legs. I needed that little extra layer. But I didn’t want to go the full million-denier arrangements, just a light touch.

In fact, I don’t feel like wearing those kind of tights at all at the moment. After about 35 years of living in them through every winter – they are incredibly flattering and warm – I’m just not feeling it for them anymore.

In that odd way, you just suddenly go off things that for ages were your staples.

Why did I ever like these? They’re horrid.

Which is another reason why I am enjoying revisiting this spotty tights scene. I don’t want to wear trousers ever again. Skirts. All I want to wear is skirts.

Of course, it’s the bias cut Ghost skirts I wrote about previously (and yes, I did buy the black one, couldn’t help myself, I’m a lost cause) that have really cemented it, but I’d already got back into wearing skirts in the summer, working my way through all my back catalogue of the things. All of them except the stride-restricting pencil ones. Stretchy tubes, A line, or flirty.

Those three skirt subspecies suddenly seem the easiest way to get dressed, which is odd, because for the last thirty years I’ve thought that about trousers. Or pants, as we say in Australia.

But every time I put pantrousers on now, I immediately tear them off again. They feel like bottom prisons. I can’t bear it.

I haven’t even had jeans on for weeks, which really is bizarre for me, as I’ve been addicted to them since I was 12 and got my first pair of 501s. (And sat in the bath in them. I have no idea where I read about that, but I did and then immediately had to do it. It was marvellous.).

I’m sure a lot of you moved on from pantrouserage long before me via the lingering and varied floral midi dress moment, but I never got on with those, because they are all way too long for me.

They make me look like a flowery Dalek and you can’t shorten dresses with layered flounces. It wrecks the proportions.

Instead, the skirt is my release from pantatrouser incarceration and I am loving the feeling of fabric swishing around my calves and getting to know to my dear little ankles again. Hello, down there! Good to see you!

The other really peculiar thing is I’m quite actively enjoying wearing these tights, not just enduring it until I step over the threshold of my front door and tear them off, the bastards. Hah!

Which is another reason why I m enjoying revisiting this spotty tights scene. I don’t want to wear trousers ever again. Skirts. All I want to wear is skirts.

Of course, it’s the bias cut Ghost skirts I wrote about previously (and yes, I did buy the black one, couldn’t help myself in the end) that have really cemented it, but I’d already got back into wearing skirts in the summer, working my way through all my back catalogue of the things. All of them except the pencil ones. Either stretchy tubes, A line, or flirty.

Those skirt subspecies suddenly seem the easiest way to get dressed, which is odd, because for the last thirty years I’ve thought that about trousers. Or pants, as we say in Australia.

But every time I put pantrousers on now, I immediately tear them off again. They feel like bottom prisons. I can’t bear it.

I haven’t even had jeans on for weeks, which really is bizarre for me, as I’ve been addicted to them since I was 12 and got my first pair of 501s. (And sat in the bath in them – I have no idea where I read about that, but I did and then immediately had to do it. It was marvellous.).

I’m sure a lot of you moved on from pantrouserage long before me via the long and varied floral midi dress moment, but I never got on with those, because they are all way too long for me. They make me look like a flowery Dalek and you can’t shorten dresses with layered flounces. It wrecks the proportions.

The other really peculiar thing is I’m quite actively enjoying wearing these tights, not just enduring it until I step over the threshold of my front door and tear them off, the bastards. Hah!

Maybe it’s because they’re sheer and slinky and not the black-as-night 70 denier, which is basically a footed pantatrouserloon and therefore a total penitentiary of the entire lower body.

Torture chambers.

So that’s the human condition isn’t it? Absolutely sure about something, problem solved, all sorted, your favourite and best, ’til death us do part, 4 EVA TRU, buy it twice in every colour and several sizes. And then it isn’t.

Next.

I’ve already bought another pair of spotty tights. And some lace ones. How long do you give it?

(And if you want to what that Levi’s commercial, here it is - but the denim isn’t dark enough. The water should be like ink. That always irked me.)