Le Silla Colette: the lace-up ankle boot shot with black front-seam tights

Le Silla's latest Instagram posts are about a boot, but the eye goes first to the tights. The Italian shoemaker is showing its Colette ankle boot, black, laced up the front and set on a 120 mm stiletto, with sheer black tights and a fine seam that runs down the front of the shin. The seam ends where the lacing begins, so leg and boot read as one line. Here is the boot, what the photos show of the tights and how to get the effect.

The boot: Colette, a lace-up from corsetry

Le Silla is a footwear label from the Marche, the shoemaking region on Italy's Adriatic coast, founded in 1994 by Enio Silla and Monica Ciabattini, according to the brand page of the Vienna retailer Steffl. Colette is its lace-up family: on the brand's site the name covers knee boots, thigh-high boots, ankle boots at 80 and 120 mm and a pump.

The pair in the posts is the Colette Ankle Boot 120 mm in black crackled-effect deerskin, code 4249B100BLPPCAM377. The product page describes front lacing that shows "subtle glimpses of the foot", a 120 mm stiletto and Italian manufacture. It costs $1,344 on the US site, €988 in Italy and France and £958 in the UK; the same crackled leather also comes in a Sacher brown.

The captions put it simply. "COLETTE draws inspiration from corsetry with its sensual front lacing", Le Silla writes, and a second post says the deerskin has "a distinctive craquelé finish". All three posts carry the hashtag #LSFW26.

The tights: a seam down the front

The reel posted on 6 November is where the tights are clearest. When the model stands with the pointed toes towards the camera, both legs show a thin dark line running down the middle of the shin. That is the front of the leg, not the back: the seam continues the line of the lacing, which on the Colette sits on the instep.

The photo posted on 8 November, the model half hidden behind a steel door on a red floor, shows the same sheer black tights with the seam visible along the leg down to the boot.

In the third post, a close-up of the crackled leather, the tights are the same sheer black, but the angle doesn't show the seam.

What we know and what we don't: Le Silla credits only the boot. The tights' brand isn't named in the captions and no account is tagged. From the photos they look around 10 to 20 denier, matt, black. That is our reading.

Where the seam comes from

For most of the twentieth century the seam wasn't decoration. Fully fashioned stockings were knitted flat and closed with a seam up the back of the leg. When nylon became scarce in the Second World War, women drew a "black line down the back of their bare legs" to fake the stockings, as Encyclopedia.com recounts. Seamless stockings, knitted in the round, took over in the early 1960s: according to the Knitting Together archive of the British hosiery industry, the Italian Zodiac circular machine of 1961 and a Hanes campaign in the US made orders for fully fashioned stockings collapse. Tights arrived with the miniskirt, later in the same decade.

Since then the seam has been a choice, almost always at the back: a retro, pin-up detail, often with a Cuban heel. This season it is back on new pairs, such as the Floral Lace Tights with a back seam in Hailey Bieber's campaign for Calzedonia.

Why the front works

Moving the seam to the front changes its job. At the back it draws the eye to the calf and the heel; at the front it draws a vertical line from knee to toe and lengthens the leg as seen face on. With a lace-up boot the trick doubles: the seam carries on as the lacing, and tights and shoe look like one piece. We saw a light version of the same idea on Bianca Balti at GialappaShow, ivory tights with a seam running right to the toe of her pumps.

How to copy it

Finding a pair made with the seam on the front is hard: the seamed tights in shops have it at the back. So the picks above are alternatives, marked "similar".

• The easy way: seamed hold-ups. Each leg is a separate piece, so you can turn it until the seam sits in the middle of the shin. Black, sheer, 15 denier, like the CALZITALY Sheer Hold Ups with Back Seam. Read more on hold-ups and stockings.
• With tights. Back-seam tights, such as Wolford's Individual 10 Back Seam or Calzedonia's 20 Denier Sheer Back Seam, keep the seam at the back as made. You can't turn the legs one at a time, and wearing them back to front moves the gusset as well.
• The denier. 10 to 20 denier, matt: the seam has to show on the skin, and a heavier pair would hide it.
• The boot. Black, pointed, laced on the instep, so the seam has something to continue into. More ideas in our guide to tights with ankle boots.
• The hem. Short skirt or shorts, as in Le Silla's posts: the seam has to be seen from the knee down.

The photos

The three embeds are Le Silla's official Instagram posts of 6, 7 and 8 November 2026. The product details come from the Colette Ankle Boot 120 mm page on lesilla.com. The site's photos aren't reproduced here.

Black tights, a lace-up boot and one line that goes from the knee to the toe: Le Silla has put the seam where it can be seen.