The Layered Look for Legs

Limbs coming out of limbo

Considering how delicately they enhance the view--any view--beautiful female legs have been scandalously neglected by fashion. While every other part of the female anatomy is singled out for celebration from one season to the next, legs are mostly left to hoof it. Beautiful Legs are particularly badly treated in winter, when they are either stuffed into pants and rendered unviewable or left like Dickensian waifs to battle wind-chill factor through a pinch of pantyhose. When Beautiful Legs complain about this scurvy treatment, they are curtly told by designers to go take a walk.

The happy news this fall is that legs are coming in from the cold. The fashion industry is calling this the Year of the Leg. Designers can hardly do too much to glamorize the gam and take the limb out of limbo. Dawn Mello, fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman, pronounces: "If you want to do something new to your wardrobe, you accessorize the leg." Adds Sunny Clark, a buyer for Henri Bendel: "This year there are a jillion different looks for the leg." The re-emergence of the leg results partly from the new, bigger, fuller skirts and dresses that require attention be paid to the underpinnings. Says Fashion Editor Elsa Klensch of Harper's Bazaar: "No doubt of it, the leg has come back as the center of interest. For years we covered them up with pants. Now they're back, and they're fun."

In effect, the layered look has simply extended downward. Legs are being gussied up--particularly to the advantage of the unbeautiful ones--with thigh-high socks and knee-high socks, cuffers (a.k.a. anklets) and the leg warmers that dancers have worn for years. One or two or all of these furbelows may be worn at the same time, and they can be used to make endless variations on a theme: a knee-high can be rolled down to become a cuffer; the leg warmer can be adjusted to look like Chaplin's baggy pants. (Beautiful Legs have learned they can also be funny.) Apart from the possible permutations, the socks come in just about every hue and mix and material imaginable. Some striped jobs look like pousse-cafe or rugby sweaters gone south; others come in cable knits and heathery cottons. There are jacquard knits, woolens in every shade from bubble-gum pink to moonstone gray and Lurex numbers aglitter with specks of gold and silver.

From Bendel's and Bergdorfs in Manhattan to Saks Fifth Avenue in Chicago to Neiman-Marcus in Dallas, leggy accessories are already a runaway business. How hot they will be when it gets cold is anyone's guess.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.