White socks with sliders will always be hideous but somehow, it is back in style. Photo: dpa
White socks, long mocked, are now firmly part of the fashion scene. No longer, when paired with sandals, are they seen as a hallmark of Germans abroad.
These days, white socks, a global phenomenon, are often worn with shorts so that the brand can be clearly seen, whether they are Nike, Adidas, Puma or other.
It sounds like white socks are back – in fact they never went away, it is just they are no longer a fashion faux pas.
Style influencers from Generation Z (those born between the mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2010s) – from pop star Billie Eilish to actor Paul Mescal – are wearing humble white sock as though they were never out of fashion.
Meanwhile short trainer socks, previously loved by millennials (born between the early 1980s and the mid-to-late 1990s) are staying stuck at the bottom of our sock drawers – especially ones that make it look as though you're not wearing any socks at all.
White socks and black loafers
At Milan Fashion Week, Paul Mescal showed off his "bare, untanned legs in white cotton socks".
Mescal also posed for a Gucci campaign wearing white socks and loafers. He wore the same thing at the label's fashion show.
What caused even more of a stir was the 28-year-old's extremely short shorts, which almost looked like boxer shorts.
Austrian newspaper Der Standard says this is a trend too.
"Showing off your thighs in this heat doesn't mean you've lost control of your fashion sense."
Fashion magazine W says Mescal was proving that "men, too, can dabble in the exposed underwear trend".
Read more: How short should men's shorts be? Inseam trends move up and down all the time
But that's another story – back to the socks.
Billie Eilish pairs white socks with buckled heeled pumps. Photo: Instagram/Billie Eilish"The comeback of exposed socks is a kind of counter-trend to a time when it was fashionable to bare your ankles, to wear trainer socks or even not wear socks at all," says fashion editor Sebastian Schwarz from German trade magazine TextilWirtschaft.
"It was a trend that could be uncomfortable for your feet, and one that looked pretty silly when you took your shoes off."
Tennis socks are worn pulled up with sneakers, smart loafers, Birkenstocks or trekking sandals, says Schwarz. In a street-wear context, "white socks are paired with sliders".
Should you show your socks?
"This always depends on the person and the outfit. And on the trousers and shoes you want to wear with the socks. Not every trend works for every person."
White associated with laundry, cleanliness
"A man in white socks and sandals is a much criticised figure," clothing historian Julia Burde says.
"The criticism is less about the socks being white, but more about the combination of socks and sandals, which corresponds neither to the original use of socks nor that of the sandal."
The mocking of white socks as a fashion sin committed by men in particular has taken on a life of its own in recent decades.
Historically, white socks can be traced back to sportswear in the 19th century in the Anglo-American sphere, says Burde, who teaches the cultural history of clothing at the University of the Arts in Berlin.
"In the 19th and early 20th centuries, people used boiling water to wash their clothes, which over time caused colours to fade. White is therefore synonymous with personal hygiene."
From around the 1940s, white socks became a part of teen and college fashion in the US.
"The white sock was linked with penny loafers, the shoes that had been part of the uniform for both men and women at American elite universities since the 1930s," says Burde.
The visibility of the sock underlined the fact that the loafer was a youthful slipper style, and bright white was primarily used to highlight this.
The youthful fashion style of wearing socks so that they could be seen went well with the tapered trousers of the 1940s, which narrow from the thigh to the ankle, or the slim-fit ankle-length trousers of the Italian men's fashion of the 1950s and 1960s.
Read more: Leather shorts, yay or nay? The material can be a hit or a miss in men’s fashion
Socks and sandals: an act of rebellion?
"In addition to being a part of the counterculture, white tennis socks retained a functional significance as a mass-produced item that belong in the context of sportswear and casual wear," Burde says.
Starting in the 1950s, Casual Friday allowed middle-class US men to wear comfortable business wear, such as a short-sleeved shirt, on occasion.
Casual wear thus merged with sportswear to sum up all that is informal and comfortable and defies dress codes.
"This is expressed in the stereotype of the unstylish leisure wear of the man in white socks and sandals, who, in combining these items, distances himself from a supposedly female fashion sense," she says. – dpa
