Historic textiles belong to the most sensitive relics from our past. In comparison to other objects of day-to-day life, which had a special place in people's lives or because personal memories were associated with them, only very few pieces of clothing remained intact over the years. Day-to-day clothing was worn and then rarely kept. Even more rare are examples of legwear, like the stocking, which then as now had a high wear-and-tear and seldom seemed worthy of saving.

Therefore, for the following displays on the cultural history of legwear, we depend on the written and graphic records for the early periods and for very early history (where little was recorded in writing or few pictures exist), our information is based on the small amount of archeological material which remained intact over the centuries.

Clearly, we can only focus on the most important revolutions in legwear in this short overview of more than 10,000 years of costume history. This cannot replace a comprehensive cultural chronology on the history of hosiery, which has not been written yet.