The Legs Have It, With Stocking Style and Greatest-Gams Contest
It’s hard to notice in bare-legged L.A., but there has been a boom in leg wear of late, particularly with textured stockings and fishnets, which were all over the runways for fall. “Ladylike dressing has brought the leg back into focus,” according to Karen Schneider, CEO of high-end ladies hosiery maker Wolford. “There’s been a departure from casualization and a return to glamour.”
So, it’s a particularly good time for Wolford to be celebrating its 50th anniversary, she said. To mark it, the company is holding a contest to find America’s best legs. To enter, men and women can stop by the Beverly Hills and Costa Mesa stores through Dec. 23 to have a photo of their legs taken.
The contest started in late September in New York stores and moved to Chicago, Detroit, Houston and several other cities, stopping for two weeks at each spot. The grand prize winner (to be chosen by a panel of judges and announced early next year) will win a trip to Austria to see Wolford’s spring/summer collection.
Schneider said the judges will be looking primarily at leg shape. “We’ve had a lot of diversity. We’re not saying you have to be tall or a model, and age isn’t an issue.”
As part of the anniversary, the hosiery boutiques are also hosting a traveling photo exhibition, “The 50 Greatest Moments in Leg History,” which includes film stills of Mrs. Robinson’s gams from “The Graduate” and Sharon Stone’s, um, legs from “Basic Instinct.”
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Perhaps to counter General Motors’ corporate sponsorship of New York Fashion Week, Ford Motor has enlisted a group of fashion designers to use gear shifts, air bags, head rests, headlights, wiper blades, seat belts and other auto parts to create a special clothing collection to be unveiled at a runway show at New York’s Cipriani restaurant Feb. 11.
Up-and-coming designers Tracy Feith, L.A.-based David Rodriguez, Leonello Borghi, Charles Chang-Lima, Roberto Crivello of DDC Lab, “Friends” costume designer Debra McGuire, Pixie Yates and others were all invited to tour Ford’s Detroit plant, where they got their pick of parts to use for their car couture.
New York-based Yates, 34, said touring the plant gave her lots of ideas. “Why go to Paris when you can find inspiration in Detroit?”
So far, she has finished one of the five outfits she’ll design for the project: a bias-cut skirt made from woven seat belts, a matching purse with a chain handle, and a mini-trench coat made from embroidered upholstery fabric. In the works are a mesh top of interlocking Ford logos and a baguette fashioned out of rearview mirrors, she said.
Ford does not plan on manufacturing the clothes, although Yates thinks hers could be wearable. “My friends have been telling me everyone will want to buy the seat belt skirt,” she said. “I could see the ‘Sex and the City’ girls pulling it off.”
