Long before I ever fastened my first suspender, I learned about stockings from the pictures. Saturday afternoons at the cinema, Sunday films on the telly, late nights watching old black-and-white movies with my mother – these were my education in feminine glamour. And what an education it was.
There was something about the way those actresses moved, the care with which the camera lingered on a silk-clad leg, the understanding that stockings weren’t just underwear but a statement. The golden age of cinema knew how to make hosiery look like magic. Every seam was straight, every movement deliberate, every glimpse of a stocking top a tiny event.
Looking back now, I realise how much those images shaped my own sense of what it meant to be elegant. The movies taught us that stockings could be funny, sensual, transformative – sometimes all three at once. They showed us women who understood the power of what they were wearing, and who wielded that power with style.
Let me share three scenes that, for me, capture everything wonderful about stockings on screen.
The Comic Diversion: Liz Fraser in Two Way Stretch (1960)
British comedy • Directed by Robert Day • Starring Peter Sellers
If you haven’t seen this delightful British comedy, do seek it out. Peter Sellers leads a gang of incompetent criminals attempting a heist from prison, but it’s Liz Fraser who steals the show with one gloriously cheeky scene.
During visiting day, Fraser’s character needs to create a diversion so that contraband can be passed to the inmates. Her solution? She stops mid-walk, says “oops,” and proceeds to hike up her skirt to refasten a supposedly loose suspender. All the while she’s apologising profusely for her “embarrassing” wardrobe malfunction, the guards’ eyes are fixed firmly on her stockings, and behind her the real business is taking place entirely unnoticed.
It’s funny, it’s knowing, and it’s a perfect example of a woman using men’s fascination with stockings to her advantage. Fraser plays it beautifully – all flustered innocence while being completely in control. The scene reminds us that stockings have always had a certain comic potential, and that clever women have always known it.
“The golden age of cinema knew how to make hosiery look like magic. Every seam was straight, every movement deliberate, every glimpse of a stocking top a tiny event.”
The Transformation: Cyd Charisse in Silk Stockings (1957)
Musical • Directed by Rouben Mamoulian • Music by Cole Porter
If ever a film was made for stocking lovers, it’s this one – the clue is rather in the title, isn’t it? Cyd Charisse plays Ninotchka, a stern Soviet envoy sent to Paris to retrieve some wayward comrades. She arrives in sensible clothes, sensible shoes, and presumably sensible Soviet hosiery. Paris, however, has other ideas.
The scene that gives the film its name is a solo ballet, and it’s breathtaking. Alone in her room, Ninotchka begins to shed her drab Soviet uniform. Piece by piece, the grey gives way to silk, the practical to the beautiful. The transformation culminates with her putting on the most exquisite French stockings – and in that moment, you see her entire character change. She’s no longer a rigid party functionary. She’s a woman who has discovered pleasure, beauty, desire.
Charisse dances the scene with extraordinary grace, and the choreography by Eugene Loring is genuinely moving. It’s a striptease of sorts, but it’s really about something much deeper: the idea that beautiful clothes – and especially beautiful stockings – can transform not just how we look, but how we feel about ourselves.
The Seduction: Sophia Loren in Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963)
Italian comedy • Directed by Vittorio De Sica • Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
And then there’s Sophia. Oh, Sophia.
In the third episode of this wonderful Italian anthology film, Loren plays Mara, a Roman lady of negotiable affection. Marcello Mastroianni is her besotted client, and the scene in question has become one of the most famous in Italian cinema.
Mara performs a slow, deliberate striptease for the enraptured Mastroianni. The removal of the stockings is the centrepiece – unhurried, teasing, utterly confident. Loren knows exactly what she’s doing, and so does her character. There’s humour in Mastroianni’s barely-contained excitement, but the real pleasure is watching Loren work. She’s in complete command, and the stockings are her instrument.
The scene was so iconic that thirty years later, in Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter (1994), Loren and Mastroianni recreated it – proving that some images only grow more powerful with time.
“The movies taught us that stockings could be funny, sensual, transformative – sometimes all three at once.”
What strikes me about these three scenes is how differently they use stockings, and yet how consistent the message is. Whether played for laughs, for beauty, or for seduction, stockings on screen were never just fabric. They were shorthand for femininity itself – for the mysteries of womanhood, for the pleasures of dressing well, for the quiet power that comes from knowing you look magnificent.
The actresses of that era understood this instinctively. They moved differently when wearing stockings. They sat differently. They knew that a glimpse of a stocking top wasn’t an accident but an art form, and they practiced it with the dedication of true professionals.
I sometimes wonder if today’s filmmakers have forgotten what stockings can do for a scene. Everything now is so rushed, so casual. Nobody takes the time for a proper stocking moment anymore. Perhaps they think it’s old-fashioned. Perhaps they simply don’t know what they’re missing.
But for those of us who grew up watching Loren slide silk up her legendary legs, who marvelled at Charisse’s balletic transformation, who laughed at Fraser’s knowing comedy – we know. We remember. And every time we fasten our own suspenders, we carry a little bit of that silver screen glamour with us.
Do tell me in the comments, won’t you – which film scenes taught you about the magic of stockings? I’d love to know I’m not the only one who got her education at the pictures.
