“Magical decor” was how Roland Barthes described fishnet stockings. In his 1957 essay “Striptease”, the French literary theorist listed latticed hosiery along with furs, fans, feathers and gloves as part of a “spectrum of adornment” that turns a living body into a piece of theatre.
Fishnets make a comeback every few years and whenever they do, they usually prove Barthes right. They are nearly always theatre, or props that introduce a sexual tension to how we dress. We certainly don’t choose them for their practicality.
Less claustrophobic than opaques, more flexible and flattering than sheer hose, I have worn variations of fishnet tights, stockings and even knee-highs for decades, first as part of a punk subculture. Now I’m mostly a sober dresser, but I still use lattice to add a little indecorousness to a plain, mostly black winter wardrobe.
They are back in fashion again. A recent video from Vogue France shows Victoria Beckham perched demurely on a sofa wearing a modest black dress with a flash of fishnet-wrapped ankles protruding from beneath her hem. She also put them on the catwalk for her autumn/winter 2023 show, worn with oversized tuxedo jackets and elegant black patent platforms, for a look that mixed masculine tailoring with femme fatale cliché. A fluttering, black evening dress was slashed to the ribs, offering a flash of fishnet waistband — a more subtle take on tights as outerwear.
At Tory Burch, a flash of net was visible between boot tops and skirt hems. And for a recent arrival at the Saturday Night Live studio, impish rapper Ice Spice used them to offset her demure beauty with sheer bawdiness: fishnets worn under hot pants with knee-high platform boots.
But my favourite recent fishnet-wearer was Billie Eilish, with her interpretation on Instagram of the skirtless trend as a kind of absurdist hockey player: black fishnet tights worn beneath camouflage-print knickers, with knee pads, sports socks and high-heeled trainers.
Why do we keep returning to fishnets? Valerie Steele, fashion historian and director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, describes their stubborn appeal as: “see-it-don’t-see-it, see-it-don’t-see-it”.
Net stockings double that effect. “They graphically isolate parts of the body, a dramatic line across the thigh, and this separation into body parts is typical of fetishising and male arousal,” says Steele. When seams run up the back of fishnet stockings, they draw the eye up the leg and the effect is heightened again.
Fishnets, with what Steele describes as their “intermittence of skin”, are a relatively recent invention. They first appeared in an advert in about 1900. “It appeared to be a single fishnet stocking, or at least a stocking with a diamond-shaped pattern, but it’s not clear if it’s a form of open work or embroidery,” says Steele. “Fishnets come later in the 1910s and 1920s. But initially the design seems to have been sewn on to flesh-coloured stockings, not with the skin showing through.”
Later Gypsy Rose Lee, a phenomenally successful burlesque entertainer of the 1930s and ’40s, wore fishnets as costume, as did pin-up Bettie Page in the 1950s. Page was an aspiring actress — and apparently a good one — who would also appear in adult magazines, with quaint titles like “Titter”, “Eyefull” and “Wink”.
For professional dancers in the 20th-century entertainment industry, latticework tights allowed greater flexibility than taut, opaque legwear. But sexual availability was often suggested in how dancers were portrayed. Think of a painfully young Audrey Hepburn in 1950, posing with arch expression in seamed fishnets, leotard and ballet shoes, as if taking a break from the barre.
“By the 1960s fishnets were not particularly risqué,” says Steele. “They had very small holes and tended to be in different colours, more innocent and childish. It isn’t until the ’70s when you get trashy-looking black fishnets again, with punk and goth subcultures.”
Punks in fishnets could be read as a defiant reclamation of sexuality. Think of Siouxsie Sioux as a kind of punk Elizabeth Taylor in arm-length fishnet gloves, or Nina Hagen as a parody of Bettie Page-style pin-ups. Deliberately torn fishnets are the ultimate expression of control regained, a subversion of received ideas of what women should wear.
“And Madonna took that into a high-fashion performance style, where fishnets represent bad-girl sexuality,” says Steele. Today those same paradoxes lend themselves to an era of gender nonconformity and questioning.
“The perfect mix of a sophisticated yet daring look that plain hosiery doesn’t quite achieve on its own,” is how Nao Takekoshi, artistic director of high-end hosiery label Wolford, describes fishnets’ modern appeal. Demand, he says, remains steady season after season.
How might we wear fishnets now? With open-toed high-heeled sandals, a sheer evening dress and a full-length cashmere coat, they lend trashy camp to an otherwise sensible approach to arriving at winter parties.
Wolford’s Sixties fishnets have an exaggeratedly wide weave (£30 on sale, beautyfresh.co.uk), while Calzedonia makes micronet fishnets in a range of skin colours (£13, calzedonia.com). These tend to be easier to wear: flexible, yet with the illusion of opacity from a distance and, with less skin revealed, usually warmer. Falke’s Houndstooth is a fishnet-effect opaque style and a good, low-risk option (£29, falke.com).
Colours exaggerate the visually distorting effect of fishnets: I wore electric blue versions for decades. Knee-highs are particularly effective with ankle-skimming jeans and low ankle-boots. I buy mine from LissKiss — they seem indestructible.
Next, I would like Alaïa’s croc tights with their animalistic, transmorphing effect — a modern update on conventional fishnets (£220, maison-alaia.com).
Sure, the tease of fishnets is not for everyone. They have never lost their century-old association with sex, promiscuity and sleazy glamour. They can be a literal trap — a single toe caught in a fishnet’s weave can be agony. But for sheer, bawdy theatre, there is no escaping the fishnet’s singular power.
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