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10/30/2009 3:32 AM

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For much of my 20s and 30s, a sizeable portion of my time was dedicated to the procurement and upkeep of panty hose. The last thing I did every night was to locate and vet the pair that I would wear to work the next morning.

The quality of the hose improved as my salary did. My first panty hose came from little plastic eggs at the supermarket, followed by the ones in flat cardboard envelopes at the department store. By the time I'd reached cruising altitude in my journalism career, I was going straight for the $12 hose by Donna Karan.

A few nights a week, I would gather the hose and dump them in the bathtub with some shampoo. I'd squish away at them like an old washer woman at the river, rinse them, roll them in bath towels to get the water out and then drape them over the shower rod, where they hung like nude honey-beige stalactites, dripping puddles onto the floor.

It's been almost 15 years. Avoiding panty hose is doable when you adhere to a few rules: 1) Have children, ensuring that years will go by without the need for clothing dressy enough to require hose. You won't be invited anywhere and if you are, you won't have a sitter; 2) become a pants-and-boots kind of girl, and 3) follow the trends.

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Which is, if you've been paying attention, the bare leg trend. It appears that Meredith Vieira does not wear hose when she's sitting on the set of the "Today" show, just self-tanner. Ditto Katie Couric when she was on the show, although it's hard to tell now that she's moved to the big desk of the "Evening News."

I thought I was free of this whole subject until last weekend, when we attended a bar mitzvah, the invitation to which specified "dressy casual." I pulled out a playful black dress - never worn - from last year and was delighted to find it still fit. It would require black suede pumps, which I had, and considering the cold weather, black hose, which I did not.

Sticker shock. While I was hibernating, $12 hose shot up to $28. And, apparently, fishnets became commonplace.

I described my dress to the young, lovely saleswoman and she walked me straight over to the fishnet aisle. Too much, I said. She held up a pair of hose with black stars climbing up the back seam. You've got to be kidding me. Horizontal stripes? Like two barber poles under an awning.

I settled on a pair with a subtle vertical stripe.

But it was not to be. The day of the party I spoke with my sister, who asked what I was wearing.

"I wouldn't wear the dress," she said. "Dressy casual means pants and a top." We did the calculations. "Casual" would mean jeans, right? Dressy would mean a dress. And so by deduction, "dressy casual" would mean something just north of jeans and just south of a dress.

I wore black pants and a flowy brown top. I arrived at the party to find every woman wearing a black dress and black hose.

I felt like the shriveled bean, the one you pluck out before cooking them. Who is my sister, anyway, Anna Wintour?

As we sat at the bar that night, my friend complimented me on my blouse. I told her I wish I'd worn my black dress.

"I wish I'd worn pants," she said. "This is the first time I've worn panty hose in years, and they're annoying me."

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