Tough Stockings

GB 1960


A commercial advertising stockings shows women models/presenters pointing out to the camera the delicate texture of nylon. The film utilises the manufacture routines such as weaving, seaming, measuring and sewing, all of which represent an opportunity to closely examine the material in order to show off its desirable assets - thinness, crispness and smoothness. This ritual of close looking is again repeated with women touching and feeling the stockings, dressing their hands with them for the benefit of the camera. But far from being caressed as precious goods, stockings here are also submitted to some quite bizarre, even drastic acts: pressing into a walnut shell, draping over a cactus plant, scraping with a nail or taken for a walk stretched over high-heeled shoes. In order to demonstrate their resilience, they have to be put on trial.


Focus Sunday 17 Jun 2007, 14:00