Pantyhose & Tights

What the Look Actually Is

Kégels, a 28-year-old Belgian designer who works between Antwerp and Paris, built the SS27 collection around a single idea: gravity. Press coverage of the show describes a concept pulled from an everyday ritual of the designer’s, and translated into clothes that look like they are being dragged toward the floor rather than worn on top of it, with weighted hems, listing seams and trailing fabric throughout the collection.

The pantyhose is where that idea gets its most literal reading. Ordinary sheer nylon tights, worn under skirts and coats cut short or left open at the front, so the garment’s own waist elastic and the vertical seam that runs down the crotch and inner thigh become visible exactly where a hemline would normally hide them. Coverage from Hypebae describes the effect as “low-crotch nylon tights,” and it reads as pantyhose that have been deliberately pulled down rather than pulled up.

Why It’s Going Viral

Runway photos from the show started circulating within hours, and reactions split fairly evenly between genuine confusion and genuine admiration. Plenty of people online assumed it was a wardrobe malfunction repeated down an entire runway, which is a reasonable first guess and exactly the kind of double take a conceptual show like this is built to produce. It was not an accident: the same show included skirts, trousers and dresses that all droop, slip or trail in some way, and the pantyhose detail is consistent with that idea rather than separate from it.

You can see the actual runway photographs, including the clearest examples of the pantyhose styling, in the original coverage: JT Dapper Fashion Week’s full show gallery, and in Hypebae’s write-up and Dazed’s coverage of the show.

♥ See exclusive photos and videos of my pantyhose collection on Patreon

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Paralinda 80 Denier Solid Color Opaque Tights, Nude

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Could You Actually Wear This?

Not literally, and that is fine. A runway idea like this is designed to be looked at, not replicated outfit for outfit. But the detail it is built on, a visible pantyhose waistband and seam, is one you can borrow in a much smaller way. A cropped top or a skirt slit high enough to show a sliver of the waistband reads as deliberate rather than accidental if everything else about the outfit looks finished. The trick the runway version gets right that a careless version does not: the tights themselves need to be clean, well-fitting and in a single sheer, nude tone, because the whole effect depends on them looking intentional, not forgotten.

A plain sheer nude pantyhose, the kind this look is actually built from, is also just a good thing to own regardless of whether you ever push it this far. It is the base layer under the hemlines you already wear.

Source

Reporting and runway images: JT Dapper Fashion Week, Hypebae and Dazed.