Guides

Stockings and pantyhose glossary: denier, RHT, seams, hold-ups and nets

Hosiery has its own language, and once you know it, you know exactly what to ask for. Denier tells you how sheer a pair will be. RHT, sandalfoot and sheer to waist tell you where the knit is reinforced. Fully fashioned, back seam and Cuban heel describe the classic stocking, and suspender means something quite different in London and New York. This glossary explains every term you're likely to meet, from 10 denier to whale net. For why nylon is so appealing in the first place, and the history behind it, see our page on nylon fetish cams.

Denier and sheerness

Denier is a unit of yarn weight: the mass in grams of 9,000 metres of fibre. The name comes from a medieval French coin. For hosiery, the rule is simple: the lower the denier, the finer the yarn and the sheerer the result. There's no official scale, though, and brands draw their lines in different places. One maker's bands give a fair picture.

Treat those as rough guides. Some retailers call 40 denier opaque, others start at 50, and colour changes the effect: black 20 denier looks darker than nude 20 denier. Wikipedia notes pantyhose are made from about 3 denier, barely visible, up to around 250.

Stockings, hold-ups and pantyhose

• Stockings. Separate legwear covering the foot and leg up to the knee or thigh, held up by a suspender belt or by their own band.
• Hold-ups. Stockings with an elastic top lined with silicone or a rubberised strip, so they grip the thigh without a belt. Wikipedia dates the modern hold-up to Britain's Pretty Polly in 1967, followed by Le Bourget's "Top" in 1968 and Dim's "Dim Up" in France in 1986. No single inventor is recorded.
• Stay-ups. Another name for hold-ups, sometimes used for styles with elastic sewn into a lace top.
• Thigh highs. The usual American name for hold-ups, and sometimes for any stocking reaching the thigh.
• Knee highs. Short stockings that end at or just below the knee.
• Pantyhose and tights. One garment from waist to toes. In Britain "tights" covers everything from sheer to thick; in the US "tights" usually means thicker, opaque styles and "pantyhose" the sheer ones.

Suspenders, garters and the transatlantic muddle

This is where most confusion starts. In Britain, a suspender belt is the belt worn around the waist with straps that clip to the stockings, and the straps themselves are suspenders. In the US, that same belt is a garter belt, and suspenders are the straps that hold up a man's trousers, which the British call braces. A garter, strictly, is a narrow band worn around the leg.

The clips have their own anatomy. A suspender clip is a small metal loop with a rubber disc: you push the stocking's top through the loop over the disc and slide it into place. Wikipedia notes a belt usually carries two or three elastic slings a side and is usually 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7.6 cm) wide. They attach at the welt, the doubled band of heavier yarn at the top of a stocking, which is built to take the strain. Before elastic, garters used buckles or springs; suspender belts became widely available in the mid-1920s and stayed a popular alternative to the girdle until pantyhose arrived in the 1960s.

Seams and heels

Fully fashioned stockings are knitted flat, shaped as they're knitted, then sewn together with a seam up the back. They were the standard until the 1960s, when circular knitting made seam-free stockings cheaper. The technology behind them came from William Cotton of Loughborough, whose 1864 patent for a powered rotary frame, known as Cotton's Patent, made fully fashioned knitting possible on an industrial scale. Today they're made in small numbers on vintage machines, usually in non-stretch nylon of 10 to 15 denier, and you can recognise a real pair by the small finishing loop near the top where the seam ends.

• Back seam. Any stocking with a seam up the back, real or not.
• Mock seam. A seam sewn or printed onto a seam-free stocking for looks. Cheaper, often stretchier, and it doesn't come from the knitting.
• Cuban heel. A reinforced heel squared off above the ankle, like a tall, narrow rectangle.
• Point heel. Also called a French heel: the reinforcement tapers to a point up the back of the leg.
• Nude heel. No reinforcement at all, for a clean, unbroken look.

Toes, gussets and tops

• RHT. Reinforced heel and toe. Those areas are knitted more densely to resist wear and runs, so they look slightly darker.
• Reinforced toe. Thicker yarn at the toe only, the most common reinforcement on modern tights.
• Sandalfoot. No reinforcement at heel or toe, so the foot stays as sheer as the leg in open shoes. Sheer toe is used for much the same thing.
• Sheer to waist. The panty section is the same sheerness and colour as the legs, with no thicker shorts area. Made for high slits, short skirts and anyone who wants an unbroken line.
• Control top. A firmer, reinforced panty section meant to smooth the figure, which can show under a short skirt.
• Gusset. The panel at the crotch, made of stronger material or cotton for durability and comfort. Open styles have none.

Nets and finishes

Fishnet is an open, diamond-shaped knit. Wikipedia traces fishnet hosiery to the US in the 1920s, worn by showgirls, through the pin-ups of the post-war years to the ripped fishnets of 1970s and 1980s punk. The size of the holes has a vocabulary of its own. Micro net means smaller openings than classic fishnet, and industrial net a larger, sturdier-looking gauge. Names like diamond net, whale net and fence net are used for bolder, bigger meshes, but there's no standard size behind any of them and brands use the labels loosely, so look at the photo, not the name.

Gloss and matte are similarly loose. Makers describe each style as one or the other, but no common standard defines either word; one maker lists around 10% elastane in its matte tights, for example. If shine matters to you, ask for it by name and check the pictures.

Looking after hosiery

Every label wins over general advice, but the common rules from makers and retailers are the same: wash cold, by hand or on a gentle cycle in a mesh hosiery bag, use a mild detergent and no fabric softener, don't wring, and dry flat or hanging rather than in a tumble dryer. Fully fashioned nylon has no stretch, so ease it on rather than pulling.

All of this vocabulary has a practical use on cam. Performers who wear hosiery hear "something sheer" all day; "20 denier, seamed, Cuban heel, with a suspender belt" gets you exactly the look you want, and tells her you know what you're talking about. When we checked the feed on 21 October 2026, 18 of the 20 dominant performers online listed nylon and 12 listed stockings, so it's one of the easiest looks to find. The strip at the top shows who's live, and our nylon fetish cams page explains how a nylon session works.