One Legging at A Time

By TINA WILSON

I ADORE LEGGINGS! They can be a dresses’ best friend or a t-shirt’s worst nightmare.  When I first started wearing leggings way back in the day when hair was poufy and high; they came in one length, they had no tummy control, they couldn’t heat you up or cool you down and they had no pockets.  The only holes in them were caused by your thighs rubbing together and they mostly came in Black.  Leggings were supposedly not worn by the ‘fashionable’ crowd and mocking someone for wearing them outside of the gym was not uncommon.

Fast forward to today and you have a 500+ person wait list for Bandier’s Ultracor Star Legging. I must admit while I think they are fun, I am a bit baffled, especially at a price tag of just under 200$.  I love all things Stella McCartney and her Adidas collection is no exception but the influx of luxe legging competitors must be having an impact on sales. Even the European couture collections are have legging fever.  Perusing The Cut app on my IPad, I spied the most amazing Versace beaded legging paired with a jacket, talk about a hybrid! Speaking of hybrids (you may get sick of me mentioning this word over the coming months), Balmain has a boot so sexy and so crotch grazing high that seen from the right angle it appears to be a legging… a BootlegJ?…. sorry I couldn’t help myself.

Of course most of us cannot or will not spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a pair of leggings but that does not mean we must settle.  I recently acquired a pair of Commando Faux Leather leggings and while in the past I would have sworn not be caught dead in a pair of leather pants, these are very different…and when the weather cools down a bit, you will find me living in them.

Spanx now has a shrine to leggings in some major department stores and I must admit the Camouflage printed pair tempted me but the rack that held them in Bloomingdales was thinning out and my size was gone; it was the subtle darkness of the print that made them wearable, desirable and every day.

Where do we legging lovers go from here?  I recently bought a pair of flared leggings in Zara, and I love them but I have come to the conclusion they are not right for my body type; but I see potential in treating leggings like other apparel, by giving them different proportions like wide flares and combining them more with other garments…I love my legging skirts, and hope to find more like them, can you hear me Athleta?

In conclusion I want to explore why leggings are so loved, it is because, they grow when your body grows? They shrink when you do? They can be worn with just about everything? They pack well? They are season-less? They make us look athletic? They make us feel athletic? All of the above perhaps? Figuring this out is the key to evolving this retail gem. Whatever the reason for their popularity I am grateful and I have only one request, can someone please come up with a nicer name?  I am working on it, stay tuned!

tina@marronage.com