Celeste Stein Tropical Paisley Tights are too overpriced.
The first thing that you notice about these tights is the design, so we are going to ignore it! American maker Celeste Stein makes tights in one basic form and applies colourful designs that change month by month and season by season. Our comments regarding quality and fit will apply equally to whatever design takes your fancy.
A little care is needed in removing the packaging, as that band around the tights is not loose, but instead is sticky and stuck to the tights. Fortunately, the tights are not damaged nor left with a sticky residue, if you take it off carefully.
Once free of the packaging, these tights reveal themselves to be made sheer to waist with completely straight legs. The seam in the body is well made, but not flat (The US made hosiery almost never has a flat seam), there is no gusset. The waistband is about 2 cm deep; sadly on our test pair, the waistband was damaged on one side, a hazard of the open packaging. From our point of view, there was an upside to this damage; we could see that the waistband was formed by folding over the top of the brief and bonding it down.
Although even weight from hip to toe, there is a band of a distinctly different knit about 2 cm deep at the top of each leg, too high up for any but your closest friends to see, but disappointing.
The pattern is printed on the back and front separately, we can think of no other way of adding a pattern to a pair of white tights, but it is a pity that no effort was made to match the pattern, you see a clear line up the inside and outside of each leg. This will be less noticeable on some patterns than others.
At £12.95 these are severely overpriced tights. Pamela Mann does much the same thing at around £7.95. Buy them if you want a particular design for an outfit for a party, otherwise spend your £12.95 on some real quality hosiery.
For one size tights, the fit is not bad at all!
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