by Pantyhose
Gérard Mermet is a french sociologist who analyses the current state of french economy. Once every two years, he publishes a report written in simple terms for everybody to read : Francoscopie.
On the web, I found an article taken from Francoscopie that is related to hosiery. I found this article informative enough for you to read, so I translated it into english. Thank you to Geraden for the final retouches. This article is to be compared with an article from the Houston Chronicle : http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/3970468.html Thank you again to LAUF's Mick77 and Geraden for the address. I regret the tones of the two articles to be so negative about hosiery, but the dropping hosiery sales seem to be a trend worldwide.
"Tights sales are tending to decrease : 102 million units in 2003, that is a drop of 16%. The (partial) return of the mini-skirt has not been the expected springboard, but it has boosted the fashion and opaque ranges (an increase of 15% in volume in 2003). Lycra ranges have been left behind (an 18% drop in volume), and so have nylon-only tights (9%). Each year, French women buy 4.5 pairs of tights on average and spend 14 euros (£9.20). On the other hand, purchases of stockings are increasing at a fast pace (especially fishnets and fashion ranges), along with thigh highs and bobby sox (sheer socks to wear with low boots or sport shoes). Fashion designers are planning a come-back for suspenders."
Your comments are of course welcome.
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Many thanks, PH, for this European perspective. It seems that stockings and
the opaque and fashion ranges in tights are the growth areas. Unfortunately
the author Gérard Mermet did not mention the other growth area, that of
hosiery for men, but maybe that is not yet significant enough to register
on the fashion radar.
None of the translations of "en mousse" proposed by my dictionary is
correct (foam, scum, moss, froth, mousse (!), lather, spume). But enough of
these language courses. Figuratively, it means the type of fabric that
cheap tights are made of. The kind of tights that runs easily, that
provides no comfort, no support. It is practical to have a word to sum up
this idea, but in its absence, we'll do like that. Every reader will have
understood, given the explanations I supplied. ;-)
Thanks, PH, for giving us the meanings of the word mousse. I would
add that it is a word that English has borrowed from the French language,
but only in the culinary sense – a light dessert whose main ingredients are
fruit and whipped egg-white. Returning to the translation, my first thought
was that en mousse might be a reference to the texture of the
fabric being slightly spongy. In that case, 'matt' might have been a
reasonable translation, but as I could see, it did not make perfect sense.
I would say that for any text written in a foreign language, what is called
"translation" only consists in 80% of hardcore translation and the rest is
interpretation. The reason is that sometimes there is no exact
correspondence between a notion in a langage and in another, which
prohibits a word by word translation. I suppose that any translator prefers
an equivalence to a translation if it helps the final text to be more
understandable. Otherwise, no need of a translator, we should better ask
Google to perform the same task, but I doubt the result will be very
reliable.