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| Actress Anne Hart, 1959 In the few past month alone, Kendall Jenner has worn fishnets paired with clear boots, while Sarah Jessica Parker opted for a pair of statement-making white hosiery. Kate Moss teamed a classic black fishnet stocking with a mini dress. Meanwhile, on the runway, labels like Margiela, Jeremy Scott and Antonio Marras have been reinventing the open, woven stocking into tops and gowns. Why is everyone suddenly gravitating to the shocking style? |
Fishnets hold a unique place in fashion—they conceal and reveal at once. Unlike a pair of thick black tights that serve as an item of practicality more than anything else, fishnet stockings eschew utilitarianism and offer up something a bit more paradoxical.
In her essays ‘Holes in the Soul’ for CR Fashion Book, fashion historian Valerie Steele wrote, “The term ‘fishnet,’ meaning a loosely woven fabric, was in use by the early 1880s, but The Oxford English Dictionary dates the use of ‘fishnet stockings’ to 1933.” This timeframe makes sense, given the idea that most women did not expose their legs at all in public until the end of the Victorian era.
Others point to one of Aesop’s fables from the 1900s which alludes to a similar style of modern day fishnets. In The Peasant’s Wise Daughter, the king asks the peasant’s daughter to “Come to me not clothed, not naked, not riding.” She solves the riddle by arriving in a fisherman’s net.
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