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Stockings (also known as hose, especially in a historical context) are close-fitting, variously elastic garments covering the leg from the foot up to the knee or even part or all of the thigh. Stockings vary in color, design, and transparency. Today, stockings are primarily worn for fashion and aesthetics, usually in association with mid-length skirts. By analogy, the term "stocking" is also used to describe a type of horse marking in which the white coloring extends from the horse's hoof to just above the knee. ==History== Historically, even though the word ''sock'' is at least as ancient in origin, what men normally wore were often referred to as stockings, probably especially when referring to longer hose.〔Oxford English Dictionary, quotations〕 The word ''stock'' used to refer to the bottom "stump" part of the body, and by analogy the word was used to refer to the one-piece covering of the lower trunk and limbs of the 15th century—essentially tights consisting of the ''upper-stocks'' (later to be worn separately as knee breeches) and ''nether-stocks'' (later to be worn separately as ''stockings''). (See Hose.) Before the 1590s, stockings were made of woven cloth. The first knitting machines were for making stockings.〔''Elizabethan England'' by Kathy Elgin () ISBN 978-0-8160-5946-1〕 The stockings themselves were made of cotton, linen, wool or silk. A polished cotton called lisle was common, as were those made in the town of Balbriggan. Before the 1920s, stockings, if worn, were worn for warmth. In the 1920s, as hemlines of women's dresses rose, they began to wear stockings to cover their exposed legs. These stockings were sheer, first made of silk or rayon (then known as "artificial silk"), and after 1940 of nylon. The introduction of nylon in 1939 by chemical company DuPont began a high demand for stockings in the United States with up to 4 million pairs being purchased in one day. Nylon stockings were cheap, durable, and sheer compared to their cotton and silk counterparts. When America entered World War II on December 11, 1941, DuPont ceased production of nylon stockings and retooled their factories to produce parachutes, airplane cords, and rope. This led to a mass shortage and the creation of black markets for stockings. At the end of the war DuPont announced that the company would return to producing stockings, but could not meet demand. This led to a series of disturbances in American stores known as the nylon riots until DuPont was able to ramp up production. A precursor of pantyhose made an appearance in the 1940s and 1950s, when film and theater productions had stockings sewn to the briefs of actresses and dancers, according to actress-dancer Ann Miller and seen in popular films such as ''Daddy Long Legs''. Today, stockings are commonly made using knitted wool, silk, cotton or nylon (see hosiery). The introduction of commercial pantyhose in 1959 gave an alternative to stockings, and the use of stockings declined dramatically. A main reason for this was the trend towards higher hemlines on dresses (see minidress). In 1970, U.S. sales of pantyhose exceeded stockings for the first time, and has remained this way ever since. Beginning in 1987, sales of pantyhose started a slight decline due to the newly invented hold-ups, but still remain the most sold kind of hosiery. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Stocking」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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