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~ Martin ~
It still allow in the UK to wear anything - no illegal, maybe depend on country, I was wear tights and denim mini skirt that seem to be allow in public Ive wearing many time as cops passing me without stop or ask anything
~ Doug ~
In the US it's illegal to be dressed indecently, but not illegal to crossdress. Also, where would you draw the line? Some people might claim that all the boys wearing girls skinny jeans are crossdressing.
~ Rod ~
is it legal to crossdress when outside as a female
~ Andy M ~
epilators have been suggested. I've just bought a Braun and done my first epilate session. So far so good, but still a long way from hair free legs (which are essential for any tights wearing!!!)
~ Adrian ~
With winter on the way I shall be cutting down on heating bills by wearing opaque tights with a wool kilt.
~ 2craze2 ~
@badleg: Try Elbeo Sheer Magic or Elbeo Caresse. Size XL is available. They really do help...
~ 2craze2 ~
Ordered some tights from Emilio Cavallini, they're great! Good stretch, warm, opaque. Good replacement for my regular sock-wearing.
~ kingrichards ~
hi guys,new UK bodybuilder here, looks like a decent forum with lots of good info - hopefully i can contribute & learn.
~ Lucky ~
Men should wear tights for any reason also protect from blood flow that quite important, I do wear all time, love it. I wear with skirt that nornmal clothes
~ hoseclad ~
Hi to all, glad to see im not the only one out there,though i was all alone for for a long time. best reguards.

Latest Entries

Corey's story

Friday, 20 November 2009
In which Corey tells why he wears tights / pantyhose regularly for leg pains

Men wearing tights - the objections - III

Monday, 16 November 2009
The last part of Geraden's enquiry into the objections to (men) wearing tights.

More on leg pains

Wednesday, 21 October 2009
In which Geraden tells about his leg pain problems and how tights helped.

Changing Reasons III

Friday, 16 October 2009
In which TightsVirus concludes his personal story.

Changing Reasons II

Thursday, 24 September 2009
In which TightsVirus continues his personal story. Second of a series.

Changing Reasons I

Friday, 11 September 2009
In which TightsVirus sets the scene for his personal story. First of a series.

Men wearing tights - the objections - IV

Wednesday, 12 August 2009
In which Geraden responds to an enquiry and picks up an old thread.

Stealth or ... ?

Wednesday, 22 July 2009
In which Geraden contrasts the results of a poll on this blog with advice from a sympathetic female writer

Leo's Story

Wednesday, 15 July 2009
In which Leo tells how he wore tights first out of curiosity, then for the fell, and finally for medical reasons

Tights and Asperger's

Sunday, 24 May 2009
In which Geraden raises the possibility of a connection between men wearing tights and autism / Asperger's Syndrome

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The Activskin Story - I

posted Wednesday, 20 December 2006
Steve Katzby Steve K

 

Steve Katz of Activskin.com is well known in the hosiery world as a pioneer and the premier manufacturer of tights designed for men. I have been badgering Steve to publish his story for a long time. At last he has sent me his material - enough for two blog entries! So I am publishing the first one now and the second one after Christmas. - G.

Comfilon - original logo 1999

A lot of people have asked us how we got into this business of selling men's tights and stockings. Wouldn't it be easier to sell ice to Eskimos? Well, it all started in 1920, when my great-grandfather, G. Lieberman, a Russian immigrant to the US,  started up a hosiery wholesaling business in St. Louis, Missouri. He sold stockings, socks, and eventually sleepwear and underwear, to all the small "mom-and-pop" clothing and dry goods stores in the area. The business was very prosperous, and my grandfather joined the business and carried it through the depression and World War II. After the war, my uncles joined the firm and they did well with it for many years, until the discount stores, department stores, and large suburban malls drove the small clothing shops out of business. As their accounts died off, business dwindled and my uncles retired in the early 1990s, mothballing G. Lieberman & Sons.

There's a standing joke that when St. Louisans meet, the first question they ask is "So where did you go to high [secondary] school?" In case anyone reading this has such an inquiring mind, I grew up in University City (near Washingto University in St. Louis), and attended University City High School, and then Washington University. While at the university, I studied geology, and met my wife, Constance. We traveled a lot in the 1970s (petrol was $0.29US per gallon back then!) and enjoyed camping. We invested in some serious goose down filled sleeping bags which were expensive but lightweight and warm for backpacking in the Rocky Mountains. My wife suggested that in order to keep the sleeping bags clean so they didn't have to be laundered frequently, thereby causing the down to clump and lose insulating value, we wear tights to sleep.

It sounded like a good idea, so we did. I found that I liked the warmth and comfort from the tights, and would wear them under my jeans in the early morning and late evening around camp. We could thus dispense with the thermal underwear and save weight, an important consideration in backpacking. I further liked the way the nylon tights acted as an inner liner sock, saving me blisters on a long hike, because the friction took place between the outer sock and inner sock, instead of between the sock and my foot. For years afterward, I would wear my wife's hand-me-down tights in winter under my clothes for practical warmth, since they were never too hot indoors and didn't require changing when going from outside to inside.

Fast forward to August, 1998. After a series of careers in science and technology, I was looking for a way to capitalize on the then-current dot-com craze. As a boy growing up in a family with a hosiery business, Not women's pantyhoseI surfed the Web for ideas by searching on the key words "tights", "pantyhose", "stockings", "hosiery", "nylons", "legwear", etc.. Mostly all I found was pornography, which, although potentially prosperous, wouldn't have gone over well with the wife or family! Somewhere amid all the smut, I found several web sites or snippets of web sites that proposed that tights should be unisex, because men wore them too, for reasons beyond fetish and crossdressing. A light went on, and I discussed with Constance the possibility of becoming an Internet purveyor of legwear for the niche market of men. She encouraged me to pursue it further, so together we did.

The first thing we did was to see what it was like going public. There was an outdoor flea market in Sunbury, Ohio, about a 45 minute drive from our home in Granville, so I dressed in a gray polo shirt, dark shorts, black opaque tights, and black walking shoes. We drove there and walked all over the town square, checking out the fleas, and looking for reactions from people. Nothing. Nobody noticed. One guy may have looked at me out of the corner of his eye and then went back to what he was doing. No facial expression or body language indicated anything. I couldn't believe it. We met some friends for lunch in a restaurant that had a salad bar. I thought surely they would notice my tights and say something. Nope, nothing. We finished lunch and said our good-byes and we came home. I couldn't imagine I was as invisible as I was! Some months later, after we announced our business and told these friends, I asked them if they remembered seeing me in tights that day in Sunbury, and they said no, they never noticed! That was our first indication that people were really unobservant.

Part 2

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1. arcim left...
Thursday, 21 December 2006 10:18 am

Comfilon website 10th November 1999 http://web.archive.org/web/19991110065415/http://www.comfilon.com/


2. arcim left...
Thursday, 21 December 2006 10:22 am

for some reason it has put a gap in the www

It should be http://web.archive.org/web/19991110065415/http://www.comfilo n.com/


3. Geraden left...
Thursday, 21 December 2006 1:07 pm

Hi Arcim

Thanks for the interesting link!

A bit of explanation here:

The comments on this blog use (a variation of) a protocol called 'wiki markup' - not quite as full an implementation as that used by wikipedia, but close enough. The syntax for links is that they have to be enclosed in square brackets. I have made your links clickable by editing them in this way.

If a space or a line break appears on the page, it is only in the text and not in the underlying link - but without the square brackets there is no underlying link!

Geraden