Judging by some of the outfits they adopt, you wouldn't generally expect porn actresses to be ahead of the fashion curve. But, in one instance, they certainly are. According to a recent story in the Hartford Courant [Connecticut], if the stocking don't fit, you shouldn't give a shit.
As fashion accessories go, the bare leg is officially in proclaims experts from around the country. In plain English, no more stockings. No more 'hose. No more teacher's dirty nose.
Lauren Ezersky, fashion and beauty reporter for Paper magazine in New York, has observed a growing number of women going stockingless. "The nude-leg look seems to look right for some reason," Ezersky says. "Heavy stockings just don't cut it. It just looks too heavy for the fashions today. Everything today is sheer, opulent, beaded. The leg can't interfere with that. Even the shoes are feminine. High heels, little spindly shoes. It just doesn't look right with the stocking."
The naked-leg message, according to other experts, has really caught on this past spring and summer with the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, Natasha Richardson, Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Courteney Cox sporting the bare look.
Bare calves were seen everywhere during the recent New York collections for Spring 2000, thus setting the no-hose trend for shows in Milan, London and Paris. And, believe it or not, the supreme arbiter of fashion sense in this arena has been HBO's "Sex and the City" where its four lead characters have adopted the look.
"It's very liberating. It's very, very comfortable," Nancy Sotomayor, a New York-based editorial stylist for Cosmopolitan magazine, said of the no-stockings look. "I like the feeling of flesh - even my own. It's nice to reach down and feel your leg and feel skin not through nylon. Flesh is a turn-on."
Sotomayor, who works with fashion stylists, said the trend goes beyond being a fleeting fashion twitch. She likens today's stocking-shunning sisters to their '60s bra-burning foremothers. "It's part of coming into your own where you don't have to strap yourself down with pantyhose," Sotomayor said. "It's not just a fashion thing. It's for power women to strut into the office with a power suit showing the power leg."
"There has to be part of your body exposed," she adds. "You have to do it for your own sensuality. Nude legs are the new cleavage."
