Wolford

In 1992, Wolford opened its first US store on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue, making its signature stockings readily accessible to uptown shoppers and style-industry insiders. It wasn’t just editors, designers, and ladies who lunch who swore by Wolford, though. Fashion photographers also played a key role in popularizing the brand — like Helmut Newton, whose racy mid-’90s campaign images for the company have been both celebrated in coffee table books and museum exhibitions and banned from Times Square billboards.

Despite its popularity in Europe (Princess Diana reportedly only wore Wolford hosiery) and within the fashion world, Wolford’s celebrity breakthrough wouldn’t come until the early 2000's, when two of Hollywood’s biggest stars —Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen — made their love for the label known.