Fishnet Stockings History: Music Hall, Punk, Halloween

Fishnet stockings are hosiery knitted as an open net, usually a diamond mesh, and nobody can say who invented them. The earliest mention a costume curator could point to is a September 1912 notice in the Lace and Embroidery Review of "the new netted or fish scale hosiery." From there the net went to the stage, to pin-up photography, to punk, and finally to the Halloween costume aisle.

Who invented fishnets? Nobody on record

Popular fishnet histories trace them to 16th-century fishermen or to Paris dancers, and none of them cites a document. The more honest answer came in 2000, when the New Statesman asked Jeremy Farrell, then keeper of the Museum of Costume and Textiles in Nottingham, where fishnets came from. He did not know. His own book on socks and stockings does not mention them. He pointed to that 1912 trade notice and suggested a plausible line of descent: stockings with lace panels, then stockings in all-over lace, then a cheaper "lazy lace" that became the net. Why the result came to read as risque was, in his words, "anyone's guess."

The word follows the same timeline. Etymonline dates "fishnet" as a word for women's hosiery to 1912.

How the net is knitted

A plain stocking is a tight, even knit. A fishnet skips most of the stitches and leaves a lattice of yarn around open holes, which is why it looks dressier than a sheer leg while covering less. The classic net is warp knitted, the same family of machine knitting as the raschel machines that make lace and power net for shapewear: the yarns run lengthwise and zigzag between neighbors to form each diamond. Older nets were warm and hardwearing but fitted badly at the heel; elastane yarn fixed most of that, and modern nets are knitted from nylon and spandex.

The trade sorts nets by the size of the hole:

Leg shows, the can-can and the 1920s showgirl

The trade link is to the stage. Ralph Salem of the hosiery firm Melas told the New Statesman that fishnets belonged to the leg shows of the early 20th century, the music hall and revue numbers sold on a line of dancers' legs. One story, never documented, says the Moulin Rouge dancers liked them because the dressing rooms had no heating.

The can-can is the case to treat with care. The dance came out of the working-class Paris dance halls of the 1830s and peaked at the Moulin Rouge in the 1890s, but no source from that decade shows the dancers in fishnets. The fishnet stocking with a ruffled garter is how later stage and film costume designers have dressed the can-can, and the picture has stuck.

By the 1920s fishnets were a showgirl look in the United States, chosen, as one account puts it, because they showed more leg than the regular stockings of the day.

Pin-ups, Bunnies and nylon

DuPont introduced nylon stockings at the 1939 World's Fair, and the yarn was strong and fine enough to suit a net. Wartime rationing took nylon off the market, and the first postwar shipments in 1945 and 1946 set off the queues remembered as the nylon riots.

After the war, fishnets became part of the standard kit of the pin-up and the men's magazine. Bettie Page, Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe were all photographed in them. Ralph Salem's short list of fishnet wearers included 1950s starlets. When the Playboy Clubs opened in 1960, the early Bunnies wore fishnet stockings under the satin costume before the company switched to sheer pantyhose supplied by Danskin.

Rocky Horror and the ripped net

Punk took the showgirl stocking and tore it. The Rocky Horror Show opened at the Royal Court in London in 1973, and the film followed in August 1975, with costumes by Sue Blane. Blane has said that ripped fishnet stockings, glitter and colored hair were directly attributable to Rocky Horror. That is her claim, not a settled fact, but the dates fit.

The London scene around Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's King's Road shop, called SEX from 1974 and then Seditionaries, sold fetishwear next to the safety-pin T-shirts. Fishnet stockings, often ripped, became standard punk dress in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Holes that a showgirl would have binned were now the point.

Goth, deathrock and the black leg

Deathrock and horror punk, the scenes that fed into goth, kept fishnets as a sexualized accent, again worn by both sexes, often with a corset. Here the net met the color that already carried the whole wardrobe, black lingerie, and it has stayed a goth staple since.

Under ripped jeans, 2016 to 2017

The mainstream return came through denim. In April 2016 The National in Abu Dhabi reported net stockings worn under boyfriend jeans, the mesh showing through the rips. By March 2017 W magazine was photographing fishnet tights under shredded jeans in Seoul street style, and the blog Snobette tracked the version where the tights were pulled up so the net showed above a low waistband, with Kim Kardashian among its early adopters. Fashion Journal in Australia put it on its list of the year's most controversial trends. It sold anyway.

The net has not left. For Spring/Summer 2025 Loewe, Wales Bonner and Feng Chen Wang showed woven diamond nets as tops and layers, and in March 2025 Hello! reported Kate Moss in fishnet tights on a night out in London.

Fishnets and Halloween

Fishnets are the base layer of most lingerie Halloween costumes. A sexy cat, witch, nurse or devil costume is usually a corset or bodysuit, a headpiece and a pair of black fishnets, because the net does the work of a costume: it reads as theatrical from across a room and it costs little. The costume trade grew up around that formula, and Los Angeles hosiery maker Leg Avenue still sells fishnet pantyhose up to the oversized style it calls industrial net. The full story of how lingerie took over the holiday is in our history of Halloween lingerie costumes.

The National's columnist had a practical point in 2016: fishnet tights are hard to find around Halloween, so she suggested keeping a pair in the drawer until October.

Last updated October 28, 2026

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