Nylon Shaping Leg

• 44 in. H x 7 in. W
  Stainless steel
• On display in Making Modernity
• Gift of Joseph X. Labovsky
• The Joseph X. Labovsky Collection
• 2004.543.206

Description

Nylon stockings were heat-set on forms like this one so they could be washed without losing their shape.

Nylon, developed in the late 1930s by a team headed by Wallace Carothers at E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, was the first totally synthetic fiber. Developed as a replacement for natural silk, Nylon is a simple monomer-chain polymer created by polymerizing a polyamide in a salt mixture.