every Wednesday, women would wait for the stores that sold ... the stores would be nearly sold out. Even though silk stockings were cheaper — about $1 a pair, by TIME’s reckoning — the ...

National defense hit home to thousands of San Diego women yesterday as the nation faced its first ersatz sacrifice — the withdrawal of silk hosiery from milady’s wardrobe. And how the ladies ...

In the late 1930s, the U.S. imported four-fifths of the world’s silk. Of that, 75 to 80 percent went into the making of women’s stockings—a $400,000 annual industry (about $6 million in ...

the company channeled its invention to women’s hosiery, a huge potential market. Hemlines were rising throughout the 1930s, and stockings, made at that time from silk or rayon, had become an ...