Fashion’s latest eyebrow-raising trend is ditching pants and daring you to say something about it. The liberation of legs and the air of sexual ownership that comes with it, however, stand on ground laid decades ago. So who’s wearing the pants here? Speaking literally, certainly not fashion’s tastemakers. On runways and red carpets, our most stylish stars have ditched their pants entirely—but don’t let that fool you into thinking they’re not taking charge. Quite the opposite is true.

In a maximally minimal moment, wide-leg jeans, the bigger the better, are in the mode—do not even speak the name of the skinny.

At the same time, celebrities and designers are somehow covering themselves entirely with tights and hose while simultaneously letting it all hang out. The fashion set has found a way to reframe that most staid accessory, a pair of tights, and turn it into a daring and, dare we say, sexy centerpiece. Who knew a little bit of nylon could make such a big statement?

Kristen Stewart has forgone pants, and so have Jenners both Kendall and Kylie, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Hailey Bieber, Emma Corrin, Bianca Censori, and a lot of models—for Bottega Veneta, Alaïa, Miu Miu, the list goes on. In high-fashion circles lately, it’s all upper thigh as far as the eye can see, a pandemic of pantslessness, with sheer tights and pantyhose standing in for trousers and skirts, underpinnings as outerwear.

Stewart’s stylist, Tara Swennen, who has been working with the actor ever since her Twilight days, is responsible for that daring, barely-there Bettter bodysuit that Stewart paired with sheer black hose—extremely visible control-top waistband and all—that 34-year-old Stewart wore last month to the premiere of Love Lies Bleeding.

That thick black waistband laid bare across Stewart’s midsection can be read as an in-your-face sort of saying the quiet part out loud, being in control of one’s own control top, the shaper of one’s own shapewear, commander of the commando, empowerer of the 20–30 denier, and all that, but the declarative statement look actually began as a happy accident.

Swennen and Stewart had fallen in love with the ultra-high-cut Bettter piece, which the design house had suggested be paired with tights or hose.

“It’s really hard to find hose these days that don’t have a control top” Swennen explained. “And I was like, I really need something where you don’t see that because this thing is so small. It became like Mission: Impossible. And then when we tried on the final pair that we wore, there was a little bit peeking out, and I looked at it and I was like, ‘Oh, man, all right. Well, that didn’t work.’”

And then we were like ‘…or did it?’”

Head tilt. Considered pause. Against all odds, the in-your-face swath of the waistband became an elegant juxtaposition with the minimalism of the barely-there sarong. Not long after the premiere, Stewart walked the streets of New York City in flesh-colored hose, complete with structural reinforcement around the thighs, topped with a pair of beige cashmere cable-knit briefs. As W magazine declared, “it’s one thing to pull off the no-pants trend in a photography studio and an entirely different beast to actually champion it during a random Tuesday afternoon.”

While the likes of Kendall Jenner have worn hosiery as part of a sort of street style mullet—chill sweater on top, “wait, where did your pants go?” on bottom—Stewart’s take, contrasting coquettish hosiery with draped chain mail tops or mesh bras, is decidedly more aggressive, in line with the noir film she just released.

Swennen pointed at shapewear and underpinnings as “something that used to bind, and now it’s something that women use as a voice of sexuality and freedom…. We really wanted to harness that.”

Think back to 2018 and all the brouhaha over whether Meghan Markle did or didn’t wear nude pantyhose on royal outings, and whether not wearing them was a sign of disrespect toward Queen Elizabeth. It wasn’t and still isn’t an actual royal rule to wear pantyhose, but the conversation generated by those glimpses of Meghan’s bare calves is matched in intensity by the chatter around Stewart’s presentation of herself through the sheer closed-toe-nylon filter of her own choosing.

With visions of drugstore L’eggs dancing in our heads, it’s tempting to say that these aren’t your grandmother’s pantyhose. Except, in more ways than one, they kind of are exactly that.

Stewart, the Jenners, Bieber, and the army of the pantsless not only share legacy brands with their predecessors, but a mindset. Mod fashion was inescapable in the ’60s and ’70s, with women embracing girlish silhouettes and trading the full girdle-slip-garter combo of their own mothers for tights and hose, celebrating their youth and trying to extend it however they could, sidestepping away in hosiery-clad feet from the expectation that they would get married and start having children.

In 1965, Life magazine wrote that Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick was “doing more for black tights than anyone since Hamlet.” Twiggy and Audrey Hepburn, too, divined the fashions of today, donning hot pants and miniskirts with their hosiery and walking so that Stewart could one day ditch the pants altogether and run.

Speaking of runs: Swennen acknowledged the risks of placing so much faith in one fragile pair of hose, where a single snag can spell disaster.

“I have backups, I’m a Virgo,” she said. Somehow, she said, none of Stewart’s tights-as-pants looks needed replacing on the fly, though given the actor’s ability to roll with the proverbial punches, she’d “probably just go with it” anyway. Even so: “I always carry backups.” Her emergency tool kit: “A bit of chapstick, a safety pin, and an extra backup in my bag wherever we go.”

There’s one more important voice from the past that must be heard on the matter: that of Blair Waldorf.

TV’s Gossip Girl was an early-aughts must-watch for the fashion-conscious and drama-thirsty set. In the season two episode “Chuck in Real Life,” Blair, (played by Leighton Meester), who rules the Upper East Side with an iron fist and a stylish headband, briefly subjects a peon to a sartorial “disciplinary hearing” in the courtyard of their tony private school.

“I didn’t realize—” a hapless girl named Kelsey begins murmuring.

Blair cuts her off, acid in her authority: “That tights are not pants? Honestly.”

Lenn K. Rosenfeld, who wrote the 2008 episode, affirmed the stance to Vanity Fair. “Women—people—can wear whatever they want, but Blair Waldorf’s words are timeless and still stand,” Rosenfeld explained via email. “Tights are not pants.”