Why sheer black tights are back: from Vaccarello to Prada, and Naomi Ackie's slit
The New York Times says sheer black hosiery has left the fashion wilderness. The reasons on the runway, Naomi Ackie's Clayface premiere, and what 10, 15, 20 and 40 denier really look like.
A reader in Chicago wrote to the New York Times with a simple worry: "I thought a bare leg was a step forward rather than pantyhose. Am I wrong?" The answer, published on 5 October in the paper's style Q&A under the title "Should I Be Wearing Sheer Black Stockings?", was a polite no. Sheer black hosiery, it said, has left "the fashion wilderness" and is "no longer shocking".
We already rounded up the red carpets that proved the point, from Elizabeth Debicki to Uma Thurman, in our piece on sheer black tights on the red carpet. Here we follow the other half of the argument: why it is happening now, what the runways have to do with it, one more premiere look from October, and what the denier numbers mean when you go to buy a pair.
The New York Times' case, in three reasons
The column, republished by the Malaysian daily The Star on 18 October, gives three reasons, and they are worth separating.
The first is a designer. Anthony Vaccarello, it says, has been "single-handedly dedicated to the (Helmut) Newtonian cocktail-hour allure of sheer hose and stilettos" since arriving at Saint Laurent in 2016, with muses such as Hailey Bieber and Zoë Kravitz taking his ideas onto the red carpet. Others followed, from Antonin Tron at Balmain to Demna at Gucci, Nadège Vanhée at Hermès and Eckhaus Latta.
The second is a garment: the skirt. "The return of the skirt and the skirt suit," the column says, "has helped reframe sheers", and it is not a long skirt but one "knee-length or shorter". Its example is Prada's latest show, "a parade of only such skirts. Not a pair of pants in sight."
The third is practical, and comes from Linda Fargo of Bergdorf Goodman: "where there are skirts", there are tights. When that much leg is on show, a sheer layer offers "a bit of helpful protection", because not everyone has time for buffing and waxing.
From Vaccarello to Prada: what the spring/summer 2027 runways showed
We counted the shows ourselves in September, so we can check the column against the photos. At Saint Laurent, in Vaccarello's gold-lamé collection shown under the Eiffel Tower on 29 September, sheer black tights appeared in only three of 60 looks, as we noted in our Paris report: few, but unmistakable, under gold skirts with pointed pumps.
Prada, a week earlier in Milan, is the skirt argument made literal. According to The Impression, which we quoted in our Milan report, every skirt stopped at a modest knee length, and Miuccia Prada described the skirt as "like a T-shirt", a basic. In the show photos most legs are bare: Prada did not sell the tights, it built the frame that makes them reasonable again.
The rest of the list needs a footnote. At Gucci, Demna's mini-skirt suits came with black tights, but opaque ones. In the Hermès spring/summer 2027 gallery we found no hosiery at all: the column's list describes a direction over several seasons, not this one show. The clearest sheer black of the season came from elsewhere, at Celine in 16 of 71 looks, and at Brock with kitten heels.
On the carpet: Naomi Ackie at the Clayface premiere
October added one look that pushes the idea somewhere new. On 13 October, at the world premiere of Clayface at the Hollywood Legion Theater in Los Angeles, Naomi Ackie wore a long black dress with one shoulder, long sleeve and a slit to the hip. W credits it to Gucci and says this press-tour opener "may have been the chicest of all". Through the slit, sheer black tights, and below them knee-high black leather boots with a pointed toe and a metal bar across the front.
Tom + Lorenzo liked the boots more than the dress ("positively killer") and spotted a pattern: "This is the second time this week we've seen a slit-to-the-hip dress worn with sheer tights. Looks like we have a trend." The tights are not credited. In the photos the black is clear but the skin shows through on the thigh: on our reading, somewhere around 20 denier. The rest of the tour went another way. At the London premiere on 20 October, in a Dilara Findikoglu skirt suit with black pumps, her legs were bare.
It is the opposite of the Debicki formula. There, a short dress and a sheer leg from hem to shoe; here, a long dress that shows the tights only for a moment, between the slit and the boot.
Why it works: polish, not provocation
The column admits the obvious charge, that sheer black nylons carry "a whiff of both 1940s movie star and corporate dominatrix". But the women it quotes talk about something calmer. Sara Moonves, editor of W, met at the Courrèges show in sheer black tights and a pencil skirt: "They just make your legs look good." A recent convert, she added: "it feels fun, and polished". Olivia Singer, a British journalist who wears them almost every day: "It's an easy way to look composed and a bit elegant."
That is the real shift. The bare leg was a statement of freedom; sheer black, with a knee-length skirt, is a statement of order.
Which denier: 10, 15, 20 or 40
The two pairs named in the column sit at opposite ends of the sheer range. Our guide to denier has the full scale; for sheer black, these are the four steps that matter.
- 10 denier: almost bare. Singer's choice, in Marks & Spencer's matte three-packs, bought twice a year. The black is a shadow, and the pair is the most fragile you can buy.
- 15 denier: the classic veil. Skin clearly visible, black darkening at the knee and ankle. With a knee-length skirt and a pointed pump, it is the closest to the runway look.
- 20 denier: more black, still skin. Our reading of Ackie's pair. It holds up better against a long black dress or a boot, where a 10 would disappear.
- 40 denier: black first, leg second. Moonves likes Wolford's. At 40 the leg still reads but the colour leads: the most forgiving in daylight, the easiest at the office.
- Matte, not shiny, whatever the number: a gloss turns the 1940s film star into something else.
- Buy more than one pair. Freezing them or spraying them with hairspray does not save them, the column says. "They will run," Moonves admits. "It's the reality. There's nothing you can do."
The photos
The photos of Naomi Ackie at the Clayface premiere (Valerie Macon/AFP, Kevin Winter) and of the Saint Laurent (Estrop) and Prada (Daniele Venturelli/WireImage) shows are official Getty Images embeds and stay on Getty's servers with their credit. The photo of Ackie in the cover circle comes from Wikimedia Commons (Mateusz Malta, CC BY-SA 4.0, BFI London Film Festival 2026). The quotes come from the New York Times column as republished by The Star.
