New Activskin A1010 stay-ups

by Steve K

For this guest entry we welcome Steve Katz, who is the proprietor of Activskin.com and one of the world's leading pioneers and specialists in the manufacture of men's hosiery. Steve is famous for his knowledge of the industry, for his wit and wisdom and for his fondness for puns and ice-cream. In this entry he gives us a shameless plug for one of his new products, and an insight into some of the thought processes behind bringing out a new line!

The popularity of our new Style A1010 sheer stay-up support thigh high stocking continues to surprise us. We are well over half sold-out of our initial stock in just one month's time. That's amazing, and we're pleased that the style is such a big hit.

If you haven't tried it yet, here are the details.

We developed this style to parallel our popular A1009 opaque stay-ups. Lots of guys prefer to wear their own underwear (or no underwear) and have requested that we offer stay-ups. So after a couple of years of good experience with the opaque ones, and after a few false starts with the design of the sheer ones, we finally have both.

The sheer fabric is the same medium support fabric that we used in our popular sheer-to-the-waist style Style 1760 tights. This soft and silky 40 denier fabric is durable, yet provides some serious compression on the legs and glides extremely well under trousers. It's also great with short athletic shorts because the stay-up elastic top band goes up to the very top of the thigh. These stockings are made in two lengths - M/L for guys with an inseam (trouser length) of 81 cm or less) and XL for tall guys with an inseam of 76 cm or more. If you're in between, you can go either way.

The top band is non-lacy and quite masculine. It features a non-slip dual band of silicone rubber that will adhere to the skin and not slide down. The other reason it doesn't slide down is that it isn't stretched so tightly that it wants to contract, because it's made long enough in the first place. Let's face it. Lots of guys who wear women's tights and stay-ups complain that they always slide down. Well, part of the reason is sizing. If you stretch nylon/spandex too much, it wants to contract and slide down. If the garment is made for men's proportions, it stay in place quite nicely. Another reason tights and stay-ups slide down has to do with leg hair, which act as a lubricant and accelerates the slide by reducing friction. The sheer stay-up elastic is designed to overcome this problem for guys with leg hair, because the silicone rubber backed elastic top really does grab the skin in between hairs and it's tight enough to stay up (but hopefully not too tight so as to be uncomfortable). We have had very few customers return their purchase, so we think we're about right in the size of the top band.

We debated a lot on whether to go with a reinforced toe for this style or not. The reinforced toe finally won out. We have only one other style with reinforced toe, and that's our full support tights Style 569. A lot of guys really appreciate the added durability, so we thought we'd produce the stay-ups with that extra durability edge also. If you want a style with sheer toe, write us and let us know. It's possible we may add another style of light support sheer stay-ups with sheer toe to our line sometime in the future.

The great thing about wearing this style with athletic shorts is that if you get too warm as you exercise, you can easily remove the stockings without having to remove your shorts. Furthermore, if you get a hole or ladder (they haven't invented nylon fabric that doesn't do this yet!) you just have to replace 1/2 of your purchase and not throw both legs out as you do with tights.

The stay-ups come in five colors: Beige (nude), Tan (suntan), Dark Brown, Navy, and Jet Black. Neither of our UK suppliers is "stocking" it yet (pun intended) so write to them and tell them you want them. Their links are on our web site at www.comfilon.com .