Whither pantyhose? For the last 15 years, sales have been going down, down, down, the victim of leg tanner, open-toed shoes, more casual dress codes, and the general fickleness of fashion. But in recent months, pantyhose makers have sighted just the faintest glimmer of hope. If hosiery sales were previously “hemorrhaging,” in the blunt words of independent retail analyst Marshal Cohen, now they have “kind of stabilized.” Buoyed by the news, the hosiery giant L’eggs has launched its first TV ad in nearly 15 years. The new ad first ran in the spring and is now back as part of an even bigger campaign for autumn, traditionally an important season for hosiery.
The brand’s hope is to introduce the concept of pantyhose to young women who were toddlers when L’eggs last advertised on television. These young women appear happy to buy what’s called “novelty” hosiery (colored and textured tights, for instance, are doing relatively well). But the lion’s share of the hosiery business, the sector that’s doing poorly and that brands like L’eggs would most like to boost, is sheer pantyhose, the sort favored by earlier generations. And that’s precisely the problem. Sheer pantyhose have come to be seen as fusty, the province of grandmas, nurses and orange-legged Hooters girls. Many women in their 20s and 30s don’t even don pantyhose to attend weddings, much to the astonishment of older women who wouldn’t dream of attending a formal event bare-legged. Michelle Obama, whose days as first lady are ruled by protocol, has described pantyhose as “painful” and said she no longer bothers with them.
It’s not clear how much the L’eggs ad now airing nationwide can do to change perceptions. It features a young woman changing into several cute outfits complemented by different pairs of pantyhose and Spanx-style shapewear, and prancing down the street to a dance song. The message is that L’eggs smoothes and refines one’s look. In spirit, the ad also owes something to pantyhose ads of the ‘80s, which—in an effort to emphasize comfort—tended to show women in hose and heels dancing, twirling and, in one improbable instance, playing basketball. Here’s a look back at these and other marketing approaches from past decades, when pantyhose ruled the world:
In the late 1930s, DuPont introduced stockings made from a new material the company called nylon, one that was both cheaper and less snag-prone than silk. “New Hosiery Strong as Steel," the New York Times reported when the incredible product was revealed; in a demonstration, models played tug of war with stockings to prove the point. Women like these, pictured in Gimbels department store in 1947, flocked to buy them, and sales of “nylons” soon overtook those of silk stockings.
In the decades after, ads suggested that “your legs” could be “your prettiest after-dark accessory.” Stockings came in special seasonal colors, rather like lipstick, with one Christmas 1948 ad boasting of “sheer sheer Berkshire stockings” in a color called “Mistletoe,” and a spring 1953 ad for Gotham Gold Stripe nylons touting a “wickedly beautiful … honey blonde beige stocking” in the color “Cheesecake.” (That last ad was illustrated by a woman clutching packages and a tiny dog as a fierce wind blew up her skirt, exposing long, honey-blonde legs.)
Until the early ‘60s, stockings were often worn with garters, but then hemlines rose, leading to the dilemma of the “garter gap.” Following the arrival of an all-in-one product called “pantyhose,” women gradually abandoned old-fashioned thigh-high stockings. A 1964 story in Ebony magazine introduced pantyhose as “sheer seamless stockings you wear to your waist,” adding that they offered “a simple solution to the garter problem.” Many women also found pantyhose easier to put on and more comfortable to wear. In 1970, Life magazine said the rise of pantyhose constituted “an excellent index to advances in the area of female liberation.” This 1971 ad for Sears Cling-alon stockings, pantyhose and “Thi-Top hosiery,” which ran in Ebony, promised an array of sizes “to fit all the shapes men love.”
Sears ad from CREDIT: Ebony.
Pantyhose for "More Gracious Women."
In the 1970s, magazines and newspapers carried ads promoting Big Mama pantyhose, a brand of hosiery designed for what one ad referred to as “more gracious women.” Big Mama pantyhose came in large and extra large, in basic shades as well as playful colors like cinnamon, plum, and red onion. It may seem like a stretch to call a pantyhose ad revolutionary, but these ads arguably were. They ran in major publications—this one appeared in Life in 1971—and in place of euphemistic language, they showed three capaciously proportioned women, naked but for their pantyhose, smiling and laughing. “Big Mama, you’re beautiful,” the copy read.
Allied Chemical ad from CREDIT: Life.
Joe Namath, Sheathed and Sexy
Joe Namath hawked an unseemly number of products in his time, including Olivetti typewriters, La-Z-Boy recliners, Noxzema shaving cream, and Ovaltine, but this 1973 ad for Hanes Beautymist pantyhose is probably his most memorable. The camera pans up along a pair of shapely legs, to a pair of rather muscular thighs, and up along a football jersey to the dimply, laughing face of Namath. “If Beautymist can make my legs look good, imagine what they’ll do for yours,” he says. (Lest there be any confusion, Namath informs viewers that he doesn’t normally wear pantyhose.)
Hanes.
An Egg Helps L’eggs Crack Pantyhose Marketing
When L’eggs came onto the scene in 1970, it was seen as a marketing pioneer. Eye-catching in distinctive plastic eggs, this was the first pantyhose brand to be made widely available in such convenient outlets as drug stores and supermarkets. When L’eggs announced in 1991 that it would phase out the egg in favor of more efficient and environmentally-friendly cardboard, the New York Times ran a lengthy piece calling the egg “one of the best-known packages in consumer-products history.”
In one memorable 1975 TV ad, a fashionable young mom is mortified when her daughter points out her sagging hose. “Mom!” the girl says as they visit the zoo. “The elephant has wrinkly pantyhose just like yours!” According to the ad, L’eggs' “memory yarn” ensures a perfect fit, so that pantyhose wearers need never again be humiliated at the zoo.
L'eggs vintage ad via eBay.
Fannyhose: The Lamest Attempt at Brand Extension Ever French baron Marcel Bich, co-founder of Bic, tried and failed to break into the American pantyhose business in the 1970s. Bic pantyhose, nicknamed “fannyhose” for its elasticity across the backside, was pitched as a kind of brand extension of Bic pens, which frankly didn’t make a lot of sense. Buy a pack of 12 pens and get two pairs of free pantyhose, promised this 1976 ad—though it didn’t explain what those two things might possibly have to do with each other. Forbes later called the effort “lunatic.”
Bic via theCREDIT: Rotarian.
These Pantyhose Will Make You Want to Play Shuffleboard! In an early-‘80s ad campaign for L’eggs , Joyce DeWitt of Three’s Company fame turned her talents to hawking “Undie-L’eggs, the pantyhose with the stay-put panty.” This 1981 print ad and this TV ad from the same time period both showed DeWitt on a cruise ship, a location which gave her an opportunity to get into a number of exaggerated positions—like crouching to pick up a ball and leaning forward to play shuffleboard—demonstrating how she had rid herself of a dreaded “wrinkly panty line.” During the ‘80s, the heyday for television pantyhose ads, L’eggs went to absurd lengths to emphasize how comfortable its products were. In one ad, a woman improbably put down her groceries to play basketball in her hose and heels. Hanes, meanwhile, promised that "gentlemen prefer Hanes” (“Who is that lady in blue?” a handsome young fellow remarks), and No Nonsense unwittingly lampooned nearly everything that was wrong with 1980s fashion, music and dance, all in a single ad. (Caution: It features lasers.)
Vintage ad via eBay.
Pantyhose Try To Be Cool Again
In this, its first ad in 15 years, L’eggs attempts to appeal to a younger market with a twentysomething model who dances and struts to a Swedish pop song. The ad’s upbeat and energetic tone feels reminiscent of L’eggs ads from the ‘80s and early ‘90s, which tended to emphasize how comfortable pantyhose could be. It remains to be seen whether this—or any ad—can make pantyhose cool again.
The newest L’eggs ad is definitely a throwback, and that’s part of its problem. The sort of polished look that pantyhose offer looks antiquated now, like a woman is trying too hard. “Many people associate sheer with grandma,” Cohen says. Reversing that would require the opposite of an earnest and upbeat TV ad. It would require sophistication or cleverness or irony or shock value. It would require making pantyhose seem somehow new again.
The hosiery industry believes several forces are already at work remaking consumers’ perceptions. In an effort to explain why pantyhose sales are no longer sliding at the rate they once were, some news outlets have argued that Kate Middleton, an avid wearer of hose, is helping revive the category by looking so damn good in them. Angela Hawkins, the director and general manager of hosiery at Hanesbrands Inc., which owns L’eggs, told me that pantyhose are coming back because “we are in a very feminine fashion cycle” dominated by dresses and skirts.
But Cohen, of the marketing research company NPD Group, has a darker assessment. Pantyhose sales stopped their freefall and plateaued over the last year and a half because the category had reached its natural bottom, he says, with older pantyhose wearers continuing to replace their old pairs, but few new converts to the product. “It stabilized because it wasn’t really going to get any smaller,” Cohen says. And fortunately for hosiery companies, “their customers weren’t dying off at a great enough rate.” Oof.