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Of a Kind
What are these? Oh, just your standard hot air balloon tights, brought to you by Hansel from Basel. —erica
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Of a Kind
Sure, sure, you could try to replicate these tights at home. But Shibori Love is there for you if, like me, you just know your creation would turn out the color of baby poo. —erica
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Of a Kind
These Henrik Vibskov tights would make a Saturday-morning cartoon character jealous. —erica
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Of a Kind
Because it’s getting to be that time of the year again: some garden party tights from Pamela Mann, who has got to be one crazy Brit. —erica
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Ann’s Tight-Dyeing Guide
D.I.Y. the coolest, homemade accessory from the designer’s fall collection.
At Ann Yee’s fall 2011 presentation—the designer’s first!—everyone was psyched about the floor-length silk skirts and natty, elastic-ankled pants, but there was also tons of buzz about the totally unique tights, which the designer whipped up in her kitchen. Start with a sheer pair that you’re tired of right about now—or pick up drugstore nude stockings (used for our demo)—and get dyeing.
Bonus: This homemade accessory looks especially cool with a mini and the drapey black chiffon shirt that the designer made with Of a Kind in mind. Click here to score one of only ten.
1. “First, you boil a big pot of water. Then, you start knotting the tights. You just do it in random areas—however close or far apart you want them—to vary the pattern. Just make sure that the knots are pretty tight but not so tight that you can’t undo them. It’s worth dyeing a couple pairs at once because it looks cool to layer them.”
2. “So, the water doesn’t need to fully boil because you don’t want it too, too hot. When it starts simmering, you shut the stove off, put on rubber or latex gloves, and add the dye. You can use any color you want, and I eyeball it. I like to do about a capful of the red liquid Rit dye, a ¼ cap of the black liquid one, and then a sprinkling of the blue powder dye, which is good for highlighting. Then you add a couple tablespoons of salt, which helps make the dye stay.”
3. “You have to really massage the tights to make sure the dye gets in there. Then you wring them out, let them cool, untie them, rinse them, and hang them to dry.”
The final product, as seen in Ann’s fall 2011 lookbook.
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God help me: I just looked at a pair of bell-bottoms and thought, “Oooooh!” Who am I, Vada Sultenfuss? Granted, this pair from American Gold is a little nontraditional, what with them being see-through and all. Thus, they are a spectacular alternative to tights but should NOT be worn as pants. —erica
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The London design studio Patternity is all about patterns (punny!)—specifically discovering them in unexpected places. And each season, they pay tribute to one of their favorite finds with limited-edition tights that are as zany as they are artsy. This is so up our alley we can hardly breathe. —erica
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In Character: Veronica Sawyer
Winona Ryder’s Veronica Sawyer fulfilled some very specific high-school fantasies of ours in Heathers: Not only did she get the dark, brooding boyfriend who just happened to be played by Christian Slater (the fact that he turned out to be a homicidal maniac was incidental), but she was also smart and beautiful and could imitate anyone’s handwriting. And she wore amazing clothes, and she was rich, and she showed an important, almost survivalist capacity to be mean when she wanted to be (look, after all, at how she treated her onetime friend Betty Finn). These were all good reasons why the Heathers wanted her in their clique in the first place; they just never thought she’d bring them down from the inside. At the end of the film, we’re supposed to believe that she’d rather watch movies with Martha Dumptruck than conduct lunchtime polls, but if Veronica’s high-school life was anything like ours—and save for a few of the details, like being rich and beautiful and dating Christian Slater, it sort of was—she struggled with wanting to be liked by both the Martha Dumptrucks and the Heathers of Westerburg High til graduation.
Veronica wears one of our favorite outfits of hers at the beginning of the movie—it’s an ensemble that nods to both her rich-girl preppy and bohemian sides. Also, when broken down into its component parts, it seems completely unwearable, and yet—and yet!—it somehow, amazingly, works. —doree shafrir
This cozy Twelfth Street by Cynthia Vincent sweater would look great over a pair of skinny black jeans, but it also can be used as a super-fancy slanket on chilly nights.
Sexy and slouchy, this silk shirt by Rag & Bone can be dressed up or down, and the contrasting black buttons and oversize patch pocket give it more personality than most standard white options.
Veronica knew that showing too much leg at school was inappropriate, and this gray tweed high-waisted miniskirt by Girls of Savoy falls just this side of nice—without being dowdy.
It’s obvious that the costume designer for Gossip Girl spent many hours dissecting Veronica and the Heathers’ outfits, and these bright-blue tights from Anna Sui are the perfect shade of rebellious rich girl.
