ABSTRACT
Originally the uniform of ballet dancers, leotards was renamed stretch tights and sold in department stores as an undergarment beginning in the late 1950s. They first caught on with college girls as an accessory for tartan skirts. Tights also appealed because they had a way of making almost any shape look more shapely and because, in the private reflection of her bedroom mirror, their wearer was the sexiest thing going. These pluses combined with the fitness craze of the 1980s have rendered the garment a fixture on the fashion scene up to the present. Beatniks also picked up on the stockings as the perfect complement to their heavy black turtleneck sweaters. For this reason alone, mainstream American females steered clear of tights. Eventually, however, mothers began dressing their children in red, blue, and green versions as a means of coping with winter days. Next, suburbanites started wearing them to shopping centers, bowling alleys, restaurants, and other typical haunts.
