Stockings and Suspenders: Why They Still Matter | Abbie Investigates

I think about stockings a lot — just not in the way people expect.

They come up constantly in my work. Not neat technical questions, but emotional ones. Arguments between couples. Messages that begin with, “He keeps asking me to wear stockings…” or “Where can I actually wear suspenders without it feeling like too much?” Men gush. Women hesitate. Ask Abbie gets a surprising number of stocking and suspender questions, and they’re rarely just about clothing.

Professionally, I understand stockings well. Personally, though, I’d filed them under interesting, but not really for me.

I’m usually in jeans and trainers. I like clothes that disappear once they’re on. My underwear choices are practical, occasionally nice, rarely symbolic.

Which is exactly why stockings kept nudging at me.

They don’t really have a job anymore. They aren’t necessary. And yet they’ve survived. They still provoke reactions. They still carry charge. Even people who never wear them have strong opinions about them.

Anything that continues to mean something without a clear purpose deserves a closer look.

So I decided to investigate.

Stockings didn’t begin as fantasy. They were practical first. Warmth. Coverage. Necessity.

During the war, they became scarce. Women painted seams onto their legs when fabric wasn’t available. Utility slid quietly into illusion. Later came glamour. Nylon, cinema, polish. Stockings became about smoothness and suggestion rather than warmth.

Then they were questioned. Rightly. They became shorthand for restriction, for performance, for dressing for someone else. Tights took over. Stretch, ease, freedom.

But stockings never disappeared.

They retreated instead. Into special occasions. Into private spaces. Into the category of things you don’t wear by accident. Today, stockings sit in an odd place. Not everyday. Not radical. Just deliberate.

Which raised the question I kept circling back to: what actually happens when someone who doesn’t usually bother chooses to wear them anyway?

The setting was resolutely unglamorous.

A friend’s birthday at the local Wetherspoons. Laminated menus. cheap cider by the glass. Familiar, low-stakes, unpretentious. Exactly the wrong place for stockings, which made it perfect.

One thing was important. I didn’t wear a luxury lingerie set underneath. No matching bra and knickers. No silk. No effort to create a “look.” I wanted to isolate the variable.

This was about stockings and suspenders only.

If I was going to test this properly, cheap wasn’t an option. Stockings like this only work when the engineering does.

I chose Ballerina Dark Secret stockings and a Roza suspender belt. Brands that know how to build structure, not just decoration.

Getting dressed took longer than usual. Suspenders don’t let you rush. The clips resist. The straps need adjusting. The lace doesn’t vanish against your skin.

This wasn’t something you slipped into. It was something you assembled.

Standing there fastening everything, I felt faintly ridiculous and unexpectedly focused. That combination told me I was onto something.

The first thing I noticed wasn’t sexiness. It was structure.

Stockings and suspenders don’t disappear once they’re on. They create lines. Gentle tension. A constant, quiet awareness. Sitting down, standing up, walking — every movement came with a small internal check.

I wasn’t uncomfortable. But I was present.

Compared to hold-ups, which are designed to be forgotten, these felt engineered. The tension was even. The clips held. Nothing twisted or sagged. It struck me that the feeling — the containment, the composure — depends entirely on things being made properly.

I walked more deliberately without trying to. Sat with intention. My posture sharpened.

Fabric, it turns out, can ask something of you.

At the pub, nothing dramatic happened.

A few glances at the heels. A couple of double takes. No comments. No remarks. Which somehow made the whole thing more intense. I was aware of myself in a way I usually wasn’t, even while laughing and drinking and being entirely normal.

I wasn’t performing for anyone. I was carrying something privately.

That awareness stayed with me all evening. Not excitement exactly. More like composure. As if I’d gathered myself in slightly.

Later that night, my husband noticed.

Not the stockings directly. The effect.

He was more turned on than he usually is when I wear hold-ups. Not loudly or urgently. More attentive. More focused. As if he’d picked up on the same contained energy I was feeling.

That surprised me. Hold-ups are easy. Familiar. I’d assumed they did the job just as well. But this was different. Quieter. More charged.

It wasn’t about access. It was about intention.

I wasn’t sure if I was overthinking it, so I spoke to a friend of mine. She’s a bit of a local legend. Not because she dresses outrageously, but because she knows exactly how to turn men on without making a show of it.

She laughed when I described the experiment.

“Stockings aren’t decoration,” she said. “They’re tools.”

For her, the point isn’t how they look. It’s what they do. They change how you occupy your body. That shift, she said, is obvious to other people even if they can’t explain it.

“You don’t wear them by accident,” she told me. “That’s the whole point.”

I did feel a buzz. A steadiness. A quiet confidence that arrived once everything was in place.

But I didn’t want to pretend the stockings created that feeling from nothing.

What they did was unlock it.

That matters. Confidence that only exists when you’re wearing a specific thing is fragile. Conditional. But tools that help you access a version of yourself you already own are different.

This wasn’t about luxury for its own sake. It was about choosing things that do their job well.

I liked knowing I could put that feeling on. I liked knowing I could take it off again.

The next day, I was back in jeans and trainers, walking to get coffee.

I felt fine. Light. Unbothered. No sense of loss. The experiment hadn’t spoiled anything. It had done exactly what it needed to do.

Stockings don’t belong in my everyday wardrobe. But they’ve earned a place in my options. Alongside heels. Alongside red lipstick. Alongside anything else I don’t use often but keep because of what it allows.

Stockings aren’t empowering by default. They aren’t obsolete either.

They’re deliberate.

They reflect how we think about control, presence, and choice. About when we want to feel contained, aware, slightly sharpened — and when we don’t.

The real power isn’t in silk or clasps. It’s in deciding when, why, and for whom you wear them. Even if the answer is only yourself.

Maybe confidence isn’t what you slip into, but what you decide to keep on.