A silk shortage caused by the economic break with Japan and the increased need for silk parachutes caused panic buying and changed women’s fashions 80 years ago. From The San Diego Union, Sunday ...

Even though silk stockings were cheaper — about $1 a pair, by TIME’s reckoning — the nylons sold out for months after their debut on this day 75 years ago, Oct. 24, 1939.

In those days women preferred to wear silk stockings but had just begun to get used to the idea of nylon hosiery. With Japan being the supplier of silk, those stockings were not available.

High-gauge stockings properly should not be cheap, for they use more silk and require costlier labor, but it is possible, as I have mentioned, to put a stocking on a full fourteen-inch needle bar ...

Of that, 75 to 80 percent went into the making of women’s stockings—a $400,000 annual industry (about $6 million in today's dollars). The invention of nylon promised to turn the tables.

Women making hosiery at Minnesac Mills, Philadelphia. (Photo by Lewis Hine, 1936-37.) Women want men, career, money, children, friends, luxury, comfort, independence ...

1920s silk stockings online, WomenS Fashion 1920S Nthese Three Flappers Of The 20S Stylishly Expose Their Knees By Rolling Down Their Silk Stockings Poster Print by 24 x 36 online ...

The women seeking to lay in a big supply of hosiery were warned that keeping silk hose stored for a long time reduces its wearing life. They reacted in various ways. Some were indignant, but most ...