Can anything stop tights from laddering?

Stairway to heaven and all that

For today’s archive dive, a leggy display! Or at least, a celebration of the many times in my career I’ve started an article with some variation of “tights season is upon us.”

You thought pumpkin spice/Strictly controversy/paying £20 for an underwhelming pub roast season was upon us, but no season is ever truly more upon us than tights.

It’s a tricky relationship, for me at least. On a good day, tights are a hug you can wear. A trusty second skin when you don’t want your first skin exposed to the elements. But all it takes is one long walk with a badly-placed hole turning your inner thigh to beef tartare for that trust to be lost forever.

I managed to go the last few years barely wearing them at all, because I was living in jeans or voluminous maxi dresses and could get away with bare legs and a hiking sock. But the winds have changed again and now, suddenly, all I want to wear is a succession of silly little skirts. Call it a peri-midlife crisis or some kind of sartorial stress r…