El­sa Wrench

"A bit tar­ty," my friend Jay said, ap­prov­ing­ly. She meant black fish­net stock­ings. She likes them. This from a woman who thinks taupe is an ac­cent colour. Full of sur­pris­es, that one. Once, for her birth­day, I got a pair of whis­per-thin black stock­ings, black un­men­tion­ables and a copy of Fan­ny Price with a card that said, "Fun not in­clud­ed. Make your own."

But it just goes to show. You can't judge a woman by her in­ti­mate ap­par­el. My leg fash­ion ei­ther says "A bit tar­ty" as Jay once sug­gest­ed, or "Mut­ton dressed as lamb." Nei­ther quite de­scribes the re­al me but I cer­tain­ly pre­fer the first sug­ges­tion. You see, I, too, re­al­ly adore fish­nets. And tex­tured hose on the whole-from spi­der­web to stripes to her­ring­bone to flo­ral. I draw the line at pol­ka dot which makes a woman look like she was at­tacked by killer mos­qui­toes and she scratched with a hi­bis­cus twig.

The thing about tex­tured legs is that they teeter a fine line be­tween dra­mat­i­cal­ly styl­ish and Car­ni­val es­capee. Then, all that razzmatazz re­al­ly needs some long, slen­der pins to car­ry it off. Long and slen­der are two words which have nev­er been used to de­scribe my fab­u­lous anato­my.

But I still get away with the nets. Know how? Be­cause I just strut along as if I were born wear­ing tex­tured de­sign­er di­a­pers. Fol­low my lead: get that hem­line to just a teen­sy bit above the knee and the short­ish legs na­ture de­signed for you will look al­most mod­e­lesque. Al­though the tex­tured legs thing could go aw­ful­ly wrong, a bit of cam­ou­flage can al­so be re­al­ly right. None oth­er than the wrap dress in­ven­tor and for­mer Ger­man princess by mar­riage Di­ane von Fursten­berg rec­om­mends flesh-coloured fish­nets to be worn with glam­orous split-up-the-thigh dress­es, so the doubt­ful knees (as my friend An­gela Pid­duck used to call them) can be re­pressed in­to the il­lu­sion of be­ing smooth and sleek.

Now, I know noth­ing about crepey knees. Mine are as youth­ful as the day I skinned them climb­ing man­go trees in the back­yard. (The neck, on the oth­er hand, is the sub­ject of an­oth­er sto­ry for an­oth­er day, be­fore or af­ter a trip to the Lifestyle Lift peo­ple in Mi­a­mi.)

But I en­tire­ly ap­pre­ci­ate what Di­ane is say­ing. Cross and un­cross those knees with el­e­gant aban­don; swish those skirts like a fla­men­co dancer; skip down the stairs with­out us­ing the handrail (which is the grown-up ver­sion of cy­cling with­out a hel­met); re­joice in that glimpse of thigh. Do the fish­net and no one will no­tice things have de­scend­ed a few mil­lime­tres south since the last birth­day in­to an un­tidy pud­dle at the kneecaps.

A word of cau­tion, though, while fish­nets are prac­ti­cal­ly in­de­struc­tible (an­oth­er plus!) they can be a chal­lenge to get in­to when the alarm doesn't go off. But some mi­nor in­con­ve­nience is a woman's price to be beau­ti­ful. Be­sides, iron­ing one's knees is aw­ful­ly hard on the Elec­trolux.