The Nylon Riots of 1945 and 1946: Stockings and Crowds

The nylon riots were a run of crowd disturbances at American stores between the late summer of 1945 and the middle of 1946, when DuPont's nylon stockings returned after the war in quantities far below demand. The worst came in Pittsburgh, where an estimated 40,000 people queued for 13,000 pairs. The riots were less about violence than about lines measured in blocks, and they began with a product that had been on sale for barely two years before the war took it away.

October 24, 1939: Wilmington sells out

DuPont announced nylon on October 27, 1938, as the first man-made organic textile fiber, made from coal, water and air. The polymer came from the laboratory of Wallace Carothers, who had died the year before. The name is said to have grown out of "no-run," with the vowels changed so it would not promise too much.

The first public sale was a test in Wilmington, Delaware, DuPont's home town. On October 24, 1939, 4,000 pairs went on sale and were gone within three hours. Stockings were shown at the New York World's Fair the same year.

May 15, 1940: the national launch

Nationwide sales began on May 15, 1940, at $1.15 a pair, and most stores had sold out by noon. Some 64 million pairs sold in the first year. Within two years nylon held 30 percent of the full-fashioned hosiery market.

February 11, 1942: the stockings go to war

DuPont began moving nylon to military work late in 1941. From February 11, 1942, production went to the war: parachutes, tents, tire cords, airplane cords and rope. The War Production Board listed nylon stockings among the nonessential goods it stopped.

Nylons became contraband. On the black market a pair sold for as much as $20. In Louisiana one household was robbed of 18 pairs, and in a Chicago murder case the police ruled out robbery because the victim's nylons were untouched. Women used leg makeup and drew seams with eyebrow pencil. Fats Waller and George Marion Jr. wrote a song about the wait, "When the Nylons Bloom Again," which complained of "woolens which itch, rayons that spread."

August 1945: a promise DuPont could not keep

Eight days after Japan's surrender in August 1945, DuPont announced it would go back to stockings and said they would be in stores in September. It forecast 360 million pairs a year. It fell short, and small shipments drew mobs.

The first rush came in September 1945. In November about 30,000 women lined up for stockings in New York. In San Francisco, about 10,000 shoppers waiting to get into one store broke its window under the press of the crowd, several women fainted, and the sale was called off. In January 1946 a line formed outside Miller's Department Store in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and someone photographed it.

The nylon riots in Pittsburgh, June 12, 1946

By March 1946 DuPont said it was making 30 million pairs a month, which should have ended the crisis. Pittsburgh shows it had not. On June 12, 1946, a hosiery store in the East Liberty neighborhood put its stock on sale, reserved for "working girls" only. Estimates of the line run from 30,000 to 40,000 women, and from 10,000 to 13,000 pairs. It stretched about 16 blocks, fights broke out over places, and the store stayed open two hours late. The Pittsburgh Press headline the next day read "Nylon Mob, 40,000 Strong, Shrieks and Sways for Mile."

The "working girls" rule was its own argument. A historian of the episode reads it as a fight between employed women and housewives over who deserved scarce goods, played out on a sidewalk.

Who was to blame

Many shoppers suspected DuPont of holding back supply. The company said its plants were running at full capacity and blamed hoarding by selfish housewives, which did not help. In 1945 an advertisement in the trade paper Knit Goods Weekly urged retailers to write to their congressmen. Reporters asked why one company should hold the patent on something the whole country wanted.

The pressure outlived the lines. Facing a threatened antitrust suit, DuPont in 1951 licensed nylon to other producers, among them the Chemstrand Corporation.

What nylon became

Once supply caught up, nylon moved from the leg to the rest of the underwear drawer. Most microfiber and mesh lingerie fabrics today are knitted from nylon or polyester, usually with elastane. Old versions of this exhibit said the riots spread to Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles and that used stockings sold for $10. Neither turned up in the sources. The Pittsburgh headline did.

Last updated October 27, 2026

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