Nail clippers. That’s the best method for ripping new tights to get the perfect run down your leg. Threadbare but stylish, rundown but with a purpose. See, all you have to do is pinch a little bit of the nylon fabric while it’s on your thighs, snip, and drag—the run will easily slide both ways, leaving you with perfectly torn black tights.
In the mid-to-late 2000s, this was my routine. I’d get a cheap pair of tights from the back aisle of a CVS; they came in a little plastic ball with a pale pink top and cost $1.99. I’d get out the nail clippers, perform my surgery, and off I went. Usually, I paired them with a large crew neck sweatshirt or a button-down from the thrift store. Sometimes, I wore the tights with an oversized t-shirt or men’s henley. Rarely were pants ever involved.
It didn’t matter the occasion, sometimes this would be the outfit formula that I’d wear to a 7 a.m. class at my stuffy Upper East Side college, and sometimes it would be out all night at the club du jour where my outfit choices felt like a rebellious response to the Herve Leger Bandage dresses that surrounded me.
There was something I was following in those years, however. Indie sleaze is the retrospective label that it’s been given. It was an era of style fueled by the overwhelming feeling that the way we interact and experience culture was ending for good. The social media boom was coming faster and stronger with every day. Our lives were moving more online, and we didn’t understand the consequences. We were in the final moments of living a life where you could find out who you are without it being fed to you entirely by an algorithm. Still, the internet was there for us to share our interests, but we could discover them in a music store, or a vintage shop.
The shift for me was subtle. Sure, I was more grown up, working in offices and nice restaurants, no longer the 18-year-old who spent hours in the Salvation Army on the hunt for personal style with a budget of approximately $30. Still, I was influenced by something larger. Fast fashion trends zoomed by, and vintage stores got more curated. Aesthetics, and cores, and, hot girl summers and French girl chic and quiet luxury have exhausted every ounce of personality dressing I ever had. Despite my best efforts to buck a problematic trend cycle, I have felt flattened trying to navigate an inherent desire to fit in and a desperate need to stand out.
So when I think of my years of ripped tights, I think of someone whose sense of style was sharp. Someone who wasn’t afraid to own her own style, even when people didn’t like it. Because no matter my setting, I would wear something that I could feel, that I could hear, and it didn’t matter what anyone around me thought.
I don’t know that I’ll go back to purposefully ripping my tights or wearing a shirt as a dress that’s a little too short, but in 2025, my style resolution is to find that girl again. One that made style choices because I genuinely gravitated toward them; I discovered them, dared to wear them, and they weren’t fed to me by an algorithm pushing us all toward the sad beige middle.
