As one British newspaper article from 1943 declared, “A snooper, eavesdropping on any group of civilian women anywhere, might be puzzled that it could talk so emotionally and so incessantly about stockings.” When the war was over DuPont swiftly put nylons back on sale – the resultant queues of thousands of women across America all desperate to get their stockings leading to breathless newspaper headlines about ‘Nylon Riots’. In George Rodger’s photos of female shoppers on Oxford Street in 1940, we see the context to this time period where consumers were suddenly consigned to Utility stockings: typically made from less comfortable fabrics like wool and rayon. Although other semi-synthetic fabrics existed – such as rayon – none as yet could offer sinuous proximity to silk – the stocking fabric of choice – whilst simultaneously offering better elasticity and durability. However, the company chose stockings as its figurehead item with which to launch nylon into the world. Made of a long-chain polymer that the company claimed was “as strong as steel, as fine as a spider’s web,” its potential uses were myriad, from toothbrushes to surgical sutures. After years of research, they’d finally devised the first man-made fiber that could be created entirely in a laboratory. Why Wilmington? It was home to the headquarters of DuPont: the company responsible for inventing nylon.
But for a brief window of time beginning in October 1939, the residents of Wilmington, Delaware could queue up to buy this miraculous new innovation for $1.15 a pair. Having caused consternation when first exhibited at the World’s Fair in New York in the late ’30s, they weren’t accessible to the general public until May 1940.
Eighty years ago this month, nylon stockings went on sale for the first time.