The year is 2009 and I’m doing an after-school shift at a vintage shop on Brick Lane. “That’s Not My Name” by the Ting Tings is blasting out the speakers. Free copies of VICE magazine are stacked by the entrance. Denim booty riders, of which there are many, so many that you can’t see for denim booty riders, are being yanked off the rails in a way that’s quite frightening. Metal hangers are clattering to the ground. Oh and look, I’m also wearing denim booty riders. Paired with 15 denier tights, which I’ve purposefully ripped, with some kind of miscellaneous “vintage shoe”. Again, it’s 2009 and everybody, everybody, is in shorts and tights.
Looking back, I feel as though I squeezed into a pair of shorts and tights in the late 2000s and didn’t peel them off until, like, 2013. Which is odd because they were so uncomfortable. I remember being itchy all the time – all of those layers, rubbing up against each other – and it’d be even worse if I paired them with thick socks and Dr Martens boots. Visually, too, there was a lot going on. If you’d wanted to experience one of my more troubling outfits, all you would have had to do was board the 55 bus at 1am, where I’d have been found slugging a Tyskie in galaxy print short-shorts and fishnets that also somehow had stars on them on my way to the club underage.
But that was then and this is now and I was sure that, in among the extended Noughties revival, the shorts and tights combo had somehow been skipped over. It’s the for the best, I thought to myself, quietly filing them away with plastic beaded necklaces and pleather jeggings. I love a lot of divisive Noughties trends – I’ve even come out in support of them for this very website – but shorts and tights is where I draw the line. Besides, if we embrace shorts and tights in an “indie sleaze” way, we’re only a few inches away from then embracing them in the similarly popular “smart casual brown boots and a fitted waistcoat” way – and that’s unacceptable.
But, as with so much of life, I cannot stop the tides of change, and shorts and tights have already started creeping into celeb pap shots and street style circles. Suki Waterhouse, whom we can all agree is a stylish dresser, was pictured earlier this week in denim shorts and black tights, like a woman on her way to an American Apparel sale. Alessandra Ambrosio has been spotted stalking the streets of New York in leather shorts and tights with the confidence of someone who can pull off anything, even this. Alexa Chung, who we know wore shorts and tights the first time round, has also started wearing them the second, and who am I to argue with Alexa Chung? Indeed, I don’t like them, but I don’t like the rain either, and I cannot prevent the gathering of clouds.
Still, none of us have to be beholden to trends. Maybe you love shorts and tights. Maybe you’re, like, 19 years old and do not remember a time when people wore shorts and tights and high-top trainers with a slightly sideways cap. Maybe you think they’re the perfect segue from winter to spring. Or maybe, like me, you actually find the combo a bit triggering. Maybe you just look at them and hear the opening chords to “TiK ToK” by Kesha back when she was Ke$ha. Maybe you can already feel the heat rash that occurs from wearing skin-tight nylon tights with Topshop-style knicker shorts. And if so? Maybe you can sit this one out. Just like I should have done the first time.
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