Tights

So, the weather is getting warmer and the urge to wear skirts and dresses and other things that are not thick black dress pants is starting to make itself known and yet the number of classes I teach at the Uber-Fancy Local Fashion Thing create a bit of a dilemma with that. Because my students are largely men and tend to show up wearing suits and ties and other such uber-fancy paraphernalia, I can't really rock up in a fluffy skirt and a tank top and plop myself down in the entry hall while all the other women sail by in stilettos and god knows what else.

It's okay, though. I happen to own two highly respectable pencil skirts that can be paired with heels and some form of shirt/blouse and are not too uncomfortable. And one of them even still fits well, so that's always a plus. All that was missing from this plan was a pair of tights so that I would look both professional and not quite so bianca like a mozzarella. At home I could just stop by in the nearest super market or drugstore and it would take me all of ten minutes to come back out with an appropriate pair of tights.

Yeah, in Italy, not so much. I stopped by in Aqua & Sapone this morning, having noticed that there is an entire wall of tights there once and decided to start at one end and work my way to the other and surely by then I'd have found something that worked well.

Oh, self. Don't you wish.

so, first of all, there seem to be about eighty-twelve varieties of tights. There are "teen" tights which feature a lower waistline and some bizarre sort of "comfort" waistband. There are old lady tights that claim to hold your legs together and enable you to sprint around like a twenty-year-old. There are "luxury" tights which apparently massage your legs in circular motions. (I can't decide whether this is creepy or intriguing.) There are others that appear to have built-in panties... or maybe just strategically placed lacy bits to give the illusion of panties? (Either way, definitely creepy.)

Eventually I caught sight of some that were contained in little boxes and appeared to be the regular boring kind for people who don't want their tights to have any special abilities. Aha! (We already know that I am an unrefined peon.)

Next up: the oh-so-fun size and measurement discrepancies between Europe and America. I do not know my height in centimeters or my weight in kilos. So that's tricky. I chose the middle measurement mostly at random. (Interestingly enough, they seem to fit okay.)

And then: the color. In America, there is this handy dandy color of tights called "nude". It is very discreet and super useful, because it goes with most things (much like the skin of the average person). Also, by "nude" they apparently mean, "nude for people who have skin that is a nice shade of normal", rather than "nude for people who look like they were raised in a cave and may or may not actually glow in the dark". So when I wear it, it makes me look like I have normal skin, not glow-in-the-dark cave skin. Always a plus.

This shade does not exist in Italy. Or, at least, not in Aqua e Sapone. Boo. They do have a shade called castoro (which means beaver, I think... kind of odd) and various shades of nero and grigio. And then they have one called daino (which I just googled and apparently it means "deer" - what's with the woodland animals?) which might work as nude-ish for people with naturally darker skin. And then the lightest one is called "melone". I purchased this, because I suppose it is my best bet, but (much like the name suggests) it makes my legs look ever so slightly orange.

Why would you make tights that make people look orange? I do not understand. Is it because of the popularity of fake tans around here, which are sometimes kind of orange? So people can seamlessly blend their tights and their tans? Still, though.

I disapprove. I think I will be wearing the black pants to Uber-Fancy Local Fashion Thing once again tomorrow, and will perhaps conduct further investigations over the weekend. Sigh.

How did I just write a whole entry about tights?