Tights were made for wardrobe malfunction

Seriously, right. The person who invented tights was undoubtedly someone who did not expect to be the one wearing them. Tights are one of those things civil servants dream up. An idea that looks fantastic on paper and then when you actually try it out on real people it is so full of holes you spend the next twenty years kicking yourself for not running a focus group to check out whether it would be workable but by then it's too late so you just let it run and run. Tights. Such a great concept. You put them on, they might make your legs look sexy, kooky, funky, trendy, or just warm. They turn your legs into a fashion accessory. They stop you getting blisters in your shoes. (In theory). You can get them in every conceivable colour - indeed, I type this clad in bright yellow tights that I am clashing merrily with a turquoise sweater dress - and you can get them gossamer thin or lumberjack thick, in wool or silk, with stretch or with tummy-holder-inner, especially if you buy them in Marks & Spencer. Indeed, M&S bosses have clearly decided all their customers are post partum. Nothing else can explain the impossibility of finding a simple pair of tights that does not have the word "slimming" somewhere on the label. As far as I can remember, every wardrobe malfunction I have ever had, has involved tights. It's either about coming out of the loo and realising far too late that your skirt is tucked into then at the back. Or, much more frequently, it's about wearing tights that have insufficient stretch to accommodate a generous lunch and start rolling down to your thighs in the most inexorable and unpleasant fashion. And let's be clear about this. Once your tights have decided to part company with your torso, there is nothing you can do about it. No amount of dashing into public loos to hoist them back up will stop them once they have made their minds up. Not even tucking them into your knickers, tying a knot in the waistband, or even stapling them to your skirt (yes I have tried this in desperation, and of course, Mr Bean like, the staringly obvious consequence was that the nylon tore at the staple leaving me with a waistband around my middle and the rest of the tight around my ankles. Niiice.  A few days back I was wearing a pair of  80 denir (what the hell is a denier, anyway) tights in a fabulous shade of deep bottle green, bought can I just tell you, from Harvey Nichols, and therefore came with an implicit guarantee that since they had cost me an arm and at least one of the legs they were designed to cover, the last thing they were going to do was let you down. But this is what they proceeded to do. Nothing to do with not fitting properly in the first place, or with lunchtime gluttony that they could not accommodate. Oh no. This was about incompatible material. What does this mean? Well, it was freezing bloody cold so along with the tights I wore a wool dress and a fleecy coat, and the material of the tights rubbed against the wool which caused them to, well,  have an encounter with gravity which gravity won, hands down.  This happened, thank goodness, at the end of the working day. Important, that, since the end of the working day is the point when I stop caring what I look like. Up to about 3pm you will find me touching up my make up courtesy of Bobbi Brown before an important meeting, or making sure my hair is appropriately "lifted" just before I have my staff meeting. But come 4pm I give up and tell myself that millions of women who have worked their butts off since 7am that day have mascara down to their knees so why should I look any different. Of course, the mascara is one thing. Tights that are down at your knees is really something quite different. It was an amusing sideshow for commuters stuck in a queue to join the North Circular Road from my area to see me hobbling down the main road, my hands seemingly clutched at my sides, waddling deliberately to prevent further slippage. So what's the answer? Only one really. Wear trousers. Or get used to frostbitten knees.