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Nylon Shaping Leg
- 44 in. H x 7 in. W
- On display in Making Modernity
- Gift of Joseph X. Labovsky
- The Joseph X. Labovsky Collection
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.