Return of the Tanned Tights

Fake tan may be moving slowly out of fashion and David Walliam’s new wife Lara Stone is working the “pale and proud” look, but no one in the fashion world had anticipated this recent nylon bombshell. The Daily Mail has publicly criticised top style-influencers Sarah Jessica-Parker, Beyonce, Claudia Schiffer and Carla Bruni for stepping out in nude-coloured tights.

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At the age of ten I remember discovering what I thought was the Holy Grail, a saviour to my biggest pre-pubescent problem of fuzzy legs. Nude tights were, after all, the ultimate symbol of being grown up and would most surely project me from child to teenager. Even with my young eyes I could see the way tights made your legs look airbrushed, disguising their paleness and the odd bruise from a playground knock-around! Especially as my mother denied me the right to shave my legs until I was in Year Nine (a really unfair rule, I thought!), skin-coloured tights answered my prayers.

It was alarming to learn that this garment had actually been subject to much ridiculing and hatred from fashion superiors, the voices I would soon become to count upon in work, study and play…

As my 21-year old self, I have come to learn to live by a few essential fashion rules. Beware of the VPL is one. And never show too much cleavage or leg is another. But a rule against wearing skin-coloured tights? Now that’s a new one…or have I just been living under a nylon-covered rock?

I still can’t quite get my head around the reason for a war on tights. We live in a climate which is punishing to our skin forcing it to come out in blotches, goose-bumps and clearly showing the lack of rays we get here in the UK. Therefore, tights are a fundamental safe-guard, right? If we could all have legs like Jennifer Aniston we would jump at the chance but as us mere mortals can't afford £££s on treatment and sunbathing on our Malibu beach home we have to simply make-do. Granted, the gathering around the ankles look is one usually associated with ‘old dears’ but worn correctly, surely they should get the green light?