Sheer tights may have weaned in and out of our stream of fashion consciousness but every year, we’d be served reminders of the French girl staple at Chanel’s Fall runway presentations. While tights may not find themselves amongst the house’s icons like the tweed jacket or the Camelia, they too recall a revolutionary past like much of Gabriella Chanel’s works.

While Chanel freed women from corsets, tights liberated women from exposed garter belts that held up stockings peeked out from shorter hemlines. With the invention of tights that would stay up on its own, garter belts were no longer a thing of necessity. When mini-skirts became all the rage in the swinging sixties, tights too were propelled to the limelight. From Twiggy to Edgie Sedgwick, the It girls of the time adopted hosiery into their style vocabularies.

Winding the clock a few decades later, our tween selves witnessed Blair Waldorf, Serena van der Woodsen, and Jenny Humphrey each make tights work for their wardrobes. Coloured tights crowned Waldorf the queen of preppy town, Humphrey in lace hosiery was an onscreen emo icon, and Woodsen kept it classic in plain, sheer versions. As proven by the leading ladies of Gossip Girl, tights, in its many variations, can find a place in any wardrobe.

The ones that we saw at Chanel’s Autumn/Winter 2020 presentation came bearing the house’s revered logo all over. Chances are, you’ve probably already seen them making the rounds on your Instagram feed. We might have barely stepped into fall but we’re ready to declare Chanel’s monogram tights the season’s accessory du jour. As the temperatures start to dip but not nearly enough to pull out the wool leggings, sheer tights are one way to cling onto summer’s shorter hemlines (and state of mind) for just a little longer.