Fashion: Up with Legs

Women’s fashions have never been leggier. And so, with skirts still riding well above their knees and winter’s icy blasts already on their minds, women are searching for new ways to beat the now familiar problem of polar kneecap. The surest bet seems to be boots, and all across the country women are besieging stores for this year’s rage: high-rise stretch vinyl or synthetic-leather boots that pull on and off like gloves, and reach all the way up the thigh, to the hip.

Smartest are those by Coty Award Winning Shoe Designers Herbert and Beth Levine, who charge up to $75 for their fisherman’s waders. Keeping the boots up is in itself a problem. “I give the woman three loops at the top, and the rest is up to her,” says another high-style shoe designer, David Evins. ”You cannot imagine what weird contraptions women have devised to hold them up.” The Levines are more merciful: their boots also come with loops, plus a belt to hold the waders up.

Cry “Brava!” On the right pair of legs—ones that are young and slender —the boots can look devastatingly sexy. New York Fashion Plate Betsy Theodoracopulos, who wears her skirts four inches above the knee, says that she likes the high-rise boots because “they give my legs a sleek stocking look, and besides, without them I’d look like an overgrown teen-ager.” On fatter legs, they often verge on the ludicrous. “Have you ever seen a bowlegged girl wearing them?” asks a Boston secretary. “They look like patent-leather parentheses.”

But lissome or heavy-legged, no woman seems content until she has at least tried them on. And for the first time, women find themselves wishing there was a dressing room in the shoe store. “There is just no way to be modest about trying on these hip waders,” sighed a shoe customer at Manhattan’s

Bonwit Teller. “I’ll tell you how they feel,” said one Washington boot buyer. “They feel hot.” Yet, so much have boots become this year’s look that they are sweeping even balmy Southern California. “I didn’t think women would take to them because of the climate here,” said I. Magnin Vice President Russell Carpenter, “but we can hardly keep them in stock.” And when Gloria Swanson stalked onstage in Los Angeles recently in a tattersall minisuit and shiny black hip boots, the whole audience instantly erupted with shouts of “Brava!”

Ultimate Sparkle. For now, most of the boots are resting in the closet awaiting colder weather. Meanwhile, a profusion of colored, textured hosiery is keeping legs from being anything but dull. Out are last year’s long stockings; in this year are panty hose and stocking tights, no matter that they cost more than twice the price of conventional stockings. To last year’s white has been added both dark brown and black, either sheer or opaque. As for evening, legs have never been so glittery. Choices range from silver sheen or shiny gold mesh hose that resemble chain mail to the ultimate in sparkle: real diamond-studded stockings that go all the way up to $1,000 a pair.