Originally Posted by doormouse1:
“Surely tights are a 'throw-away' item after a couple of times of wearing? They snag and never look good enough to keep after that.
£35 was utterly ridiculous. No wonder LS turned her down”
Apologies for coming very late to the discussion, but the first thing I said to my daughters is that she's not proposing to offer stockings as part of the range - I know lots of women, including myself, who hate wearing tights and prefer stockings. There are several reasons:
1. I've got a 34" inside leg measurement (although I'm only 5'10", all my height is in my legs!). Anyone who's tried to get tights long enough for that leg length knows that usually it's tied up with the sizing - in other words, short in height = small in tights size, and tall in height means buying x large... but I'm not 'x large' in size! So I end up with tights that fall down easily in the gusset area (a really uncomfortable thing) if I've got the length, or tights that never fit properly in the gusset area (because the gusset of the tights can't reach the relevant part of me!) because the legs of the tights aren't long enough, but the waist size fits ok.
With stockings it doesn't matter if the stockings don't 'pull up' all the way - I just lengthen the strap on the suspender belt and happy days! (I'm not a fan of 'hold ups' - they always become 'fall downs' at inopportune moments! But they're great if you don't like the feeling of a suspender belt.) But most importantly of all, no uncomfortable gusset issues because of mismatched size vs height measurements - because there is no gusset to have an issue with! I buy 'large' stockings, which gives me the right leg length, but it has no impact on how the stocking 'fits' in terms of the girth of my leg.
2. If you ladder one leg of a pair of tights, the whole pair is useless, even though you still have one 'good' leg. I suppose you could chop the dud leg off and mix and match with another pair of dud tights and 'double gusset' them, but I have enough issues with gussets as it is trying to get the sizing right on one pair of tights (see above!) to want to wrestle with two gussets at the same time!
With stockings, if (like me) you have bought several pairs that are all the same, you just throw away the 'dud' stocking, pull another single stocking out of your supply, and off you go. No waste!
3. I hate the restricted, slightly overheated feeling that wearing tights entails - I like free air movement! The only time I do wear tights is in the winter or if I'm wearing a skirt that is above the knee. The rest of the time, if the skirt is long/below the knee, including in the winter, I wear stockings.
With stockings the air has free movement (much healthier!).
(Obviously all my reasons are my own opinion - maybe no one else sees the tights/stockings debate as being driven by the same reasons as the ones I've outlined above!)
Admittedly, when I do wear hosiery it's nearly always black, but that's because I wear a lot of black for work and it's the best shade that goes with anything. But if I needed 'skin tone' hosiery, I'd still only 'choose' tights if I was wearing an above-the-knee skirt (which I hardly ever wear - I much prefer longer, 'gypsy'-type skirts) and would certainly look out for stockings in a better skin tone than 'tan' if they were there.
Contrary to popular belief in some areas (
) stockings aren't only worn by women who want to show their 'naughty' side first and foremost! They're also worn because they're comfortable, practical and cool in all the right places. My grandmother was the person who got me into stockings as a teenager, as she'd always worn them too (to her, I think tights were still a 'modern' invention'!). I had them in all the mad colour options of the mid-80s (who remembers electric blue with the little bows at the back of the heel??!! Or with little butterflies all over the legs??!!
) and as I grew taller I was very grateful to my grandmother (she was quite a tall lady too).
Which is another problem with Bianca's business idea - already she'd into a myriad of combinations just with the tights branch of hosiery. Whilst stockings are never carried in the same quantities as tights, I'd say that locally it's about 60% tights to 40% stockings on offer in all the major retailers when it comes to the amount of each on offer on display - not an insignificant proportion! To have to offer that same myriad of colour options in stockings as well is something I would have thought Bianca would have to consider at some point, but doesn't appear to have done so far. At least, I didn't hear her talk of anything other than tights, and possibly in passing 'control wear?
But I've never paid anything like the price point Bianca was proposing, even for the prettiest, laciest-topped, sheer 'run-resistant' 10 denier stockings from the 'posh' shops, let alone in the more well-known high street ones! As others have said, there are options out there already that are offering similar products to Bianca, so she's got to be able to compete with them and offer something the consumer wants to pay for feeling they're getting value for money - and then she's got to keep them as repeat custom and build up some 'brand loyalty'. None of that will happen easily, or cheaply!
It will be interesting to see Bianca's progress in a year or two's time.
. There is nothing new to offer. Or if there is, Bianca is not going to come up with it.
