From Kristen Stewart to Bianca Censori, How Pantyhose Snagged Its Starring Role
Fashion’s latest eyebrow-raising trend is ditching pants and daring you to say something about it. The liberation of legs and the air of sexual ownership that comes with it, however, stand on ground laid decades ago. So who’s wearing the pants here? Speaking literally, certainly not fashion’s tastemakers. On runways and red carpets, our most stylish stars have ditched their pants entirely—but don’t let that fool you into thinking they’re not taking charge. Quite the opposite is true.
In a maximally minimal moment, wide-leg jeans, the bigger the better, are in the mode—do not even speak the name of the skinny—but at the same time, celebrities and designers are somehow covering themselves entirely with tights and hose while simultaneously letting it all hang out. The fashion set has found a way to reframe that most staid accessory, a pair of tights, and turn it into a daring and, dare we say, sexy centerpiece. Who knew a little bit of nylon could make such a big statement?
Kristen Stewart has forgone pants, and so have Jenners both Kendall y Kylie, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Hailey Bieber, Emma Corrin, Bianca Censori, and a lote of models—for Bottega Veneta, Alaïa, Miu Miu, the list goes on. In high-fashion circles lately, it’s all upper thigh as far as the eye can see, a pandemic of pantslessness, with sheer tights and pantys standing in for trousers and skirts, underpinnings as outerwear.
Stewart’s stylist, Tara Swennen, who has been working with the actor ever since her Twilight days, is responsible for that daring, barely-there Bettter bodysuit that Stewart paired with sheer black hose—extremely visible control-top waistband and all—that 34-year-old Stewart wore last month to the premiere of Love Lies Bleeding.
“We wanted to do something a little bit radical but also understated,” Swennen told Vanity Fair of the look, one of many recent pantsless fashion moments for Stewart. Swennen has played with trimmings like medias and bras peeking out in surprising ways in Stewart’s looks in the past, but never tights, she said. “People sort of take this as suggestive fashion, which is exactly what it is, but the irony is she has, in fact, been less covered up.”
That thick black waistband laid bare across Stewart’s midsection can be read as an in-your-face sort of saying the quiet part out loud, being in control of one’s own control top, the shaper of one’s own shapewear, commander of the commando, empowerer of the 20–30 denier, and all that, but the declarative statement look actually began as a happy accident.
Swennen and Stewart had fallen in love with the ultra-high-cut Bettter piece, which the design house had suggested be paired with tights or hose.
“It’s really hard to find hose these days that don’t have a control top, like built-in Spanx,” Swennen explained. “And I was like, I really need something where you don’t see that because this thing is so small. It became like Mission: Impossible. And then when we tried on the final pair that we wore, which were these beautiful Wolfords, there was a little bit peeking out, and I looked at it and I was like, ‘Oh, man, all right. Well, that didn’t work.’”
