September 10, 2012
Stockings Series, Part 2: Paint-on Hosiery During the War Years
With nylon or silk hose hard to come by, women had the look of stockings brushed on their legs.
So it’s Saturday night in 1941, and you want to wear stockings with your cocktail dress, but the new wonder material nylon has been rationed for the war effort and has disappeared from department store shelves. What do you do in such times of patriotic privation? You get resourceful, and cover your legs with a layer of nude-colored makeup, and line the back of each leg with a trompe l’oeil seam.
A successful application of liquid stockings and seams.
Last week, in the first post from the Stocking Series, we heard about the huge reception of nylon hosiery. On May 16, 1940, officially called “Nylon Day,” four million pairs of nylons landed in stores and sold out within two days! But only a year later, the revolutionary product became scarce when the World War II economy directed all nylon into manufacturing parachutes, rope and netting.
Liquid stockings were a noteworthy enough phenomenon that even the Smithsonian has a bottle in its collection. Leg Silque Liquid Stockings, National Museum of American History.
World War II poster, Amberley Museum, Britain.
As duty prevailed, a new fashion arose from the nylon ration. Liquid stockings, it was called. A foundation for your legs, applied carefully and evenly for the illusion of hose. Advanced users got even more realistic by using black eyeliner pencils to draw the “seam.”
Drawing in the seam-line on “Makeup” stockings with a device made from a screw driver handle, bicycle leg clip, and an eyebrow pencil, 1942. Bettman/Corbis
Having trouble with your seam? No problem! This contraption, made from a screwdriver handle, bicycle leg clip and an ordinary eyebrow pencil would do the trick!
Leg makeup bar, 1944, at a department store.
For those women overwhelmed by options— Ann Barton’s Leg Make-up, Harriet Hubbard Ayer’s Stocking Lotion, Patrick’s Leg Art, Leg Charm from Cosmetic House, Helena Rubinstein’s Leg Stick and Max Factor’s Pan-Cake Make-up, for starters—or unsure about application techniques, a leg makeup bar at their local department store could provide some guidance for beautifying their gams.
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I love see these articles and photos from before my time. Leg Makeup Bar in a department store in 1944……awesome. More of these please.
Sorry…..seeing
For those that can remember the 1940′s during the war, you will recall lines often formed at stores for women who jumped in and waited their turn because they thought it was a nylon stocking line. The leg make-up was a messy option, and it never really caught on for most women because this is when slacks became fashionable for the working woman. Rember war defense stamps and bond, and ration books, and gasoline rationing car windshield stickers? Then there were new shoe stamps as well as fake butter (oleo that looked like lard and had a yellow capasule included to give it color. And of course Rosie the Riviter and the USO. Appreciated looking back.