How To Wear Striped Tights Or Stockings (Without Looking Like A Mall-Rat Baby Bat)

Some Don'ts:

• Don't wear them with black Converse All-Stars
  

• Don't wear them with a tutu
  

• Don't wear them with a hoodie
  

• Don't wear them with eyeliner on the inner rim of your eye

• Don't wear them if they are laddered or have holes in them

• Don't buy them from the supermarket or cheap accessories store at Halloween, get a pair from a decent brand

• Don't wear a pair that have orange, purple or green stripes with any clothes in the other colours (e.g. if you're wearing purple and black striped tights do not wear orange or green as well) unless you want to look like the embodiment of Halloween.
  

At this point I must confess that I have in the past worn my black and purple striped tights with black Converse All-Stars, with eyeliner on the inner rim of my eye, and that they have a mini-ladder by the right toes and were bought from a cheap accessories store by my sister, the original owner.

The first two sins were committed on Halloween 2005, which was before I really learnt how to dress myself, the third is covered by shoes, and the fourth can't be helped now. They are slightly see through so I sometimes wear them with black tights underneath for best results. However, they are slightly too big width ways and I have to keep pulling them up so the stripes stay even.

I am actually currently wearing them with a skirt that has a layer of netting underneath the top layer of black cotton. However, since I am otherwise perfectly neat, tidy, and hopefully elegant, it looks okay.

I also slightly spoiled my all-purple-and-black outfit when I went out today by taking along a carrier bag with orange on it. I suddenly realised I was channelling Halloween and was not happy to say the least!

Now for the Dos!

• If your striped tights or stockings are black and one other colour, do wear (cute) shoes that match perfectly the colour that is not black. If they are stripes without black, match them to one of the colours.

An example is on the right. In reality, the purple of the shoes is the exact same shade as that of the tights. I'm just a bad photographer.

• Do wear them with more dressy/formal clothes. This will prevent you from being mistaken under any circumstances for a teenager.
  

• Do wear them with cats-eye eyeliner, it looks elegant and again will prevent you from being mistaken for a teenager.

• Do wear them with co-ordinating colours. Again, it will make you look grown-up.

Here are a couple of outfits I created on Polyvore based around striped tights or stockings. Unfortunately, Polyvore is extremely lacking in decent pictures of striped tights or stockings, so I could only do black and white stripes and black and red stripes, and no purple outfits! There are quite a few pictures of one leg in stripes, which is odd and pretty useless when trying to give a good idea of what it will really look like! Seriously, WTF?



In this I aimed to make the look softer and gently colourful. I love this outfit. I wish I had it! It would be perfect for so many occasions.



I love red and blue worn together and I decided to see what they would look like with some little black dresses. This is an example of me putting the "Dos" from above into serious practice! Ohhh, I wish I had these clothes...