I have eleven pairs of socks embroidered with avocados and lightning bolts and one very shameful pair featuring golden retrievers wearing sunglasses. I acquired most of them sometime between 2015 and 2017 when buying novelty socks became such a core part of your personality that you could purchase them online for twelve dollars apiece. When my friend Theo noticed the golden retriever socks drying atop my radiator last winter he said nothing more than, tersely, “you still have those?” like he were identifying a corpse. He had every right to judge me. I haven’t worn them since sometime during the Obama administration but I also refuse to throw them away, which I think says something about how committed I truly was back then and how difficult it is to admit you fell for a trend.
Admitting is the part no one wants to do when they Google “what men’s socks are in style right now” late at night, presumably while staring into the open chasm of their sock drawer and all the novelties they bought while riding highs they’d prefer to forget. There is an answer to that search query.
But there’s also a larger, slightly petulant truth hiding below it, which is that socks were “in style” and “so outdated” for roughly the last decade and that cycle is the point, not any of the individual answers therein.
The Cycle Devours Itself
If you rewind all the way back to around 2013 socks became a thing you cared about again. Happy Socks took off, literally every dude’s Instagram feed included at least one picture of them rolling up their chinos and letting a pop of polka dots peak out at their ankle, and wearing bright, loud socks became an easy shorthand for “Hey look at me I tried putting an outfit together” for a solid three years, regardless of whether you actually did or not. But then everyone—whoever “everyone” is when memes of clothing rise and fall—had had enough of seeing socks and moved on to no socks almost instantly. Visible ankle socks were flamboyant and try-hard, the savvy move became nude ankle socks you couldn’t see under your trousers, and suddenly everyone who still had brightly colored polkas was quietly written off as a has-been who hadn’t changed his style since college.
We’ve mostly entered a middleground phase now but honestly that’s the least satisfying answer you can get when tracing a trend cycle and also the most accurate. Color returned but it’s more muted, patterns returned but they’re understated and meant to be read up close rather than signaling your coordination from across the room. My issue with defining socks as a style pillar in the first place though isn’t that they cycle, it’s that the cycle repeats not because our collective tastes are evolving but because everyone grew bored of the current answer and needed something new to market.
A sock company doesn’t make money if you own six pairs and wear those same six for four years. It makes money by convincing you that those six pairs aren’t enough anymore, and lord knows I believed it when it said that both times. Bought a bunch of loud ones when loud was popular, bought a bunch of muted ones when that became popular. Told myself I was playing some deeper style calculus and coming to that conclusion on my own each time. I wasn’t. I was reading meme tea leaves like the rest of society and swearing it was instinct.
But What Do “Work” Right Now? Putting My One Percenter Tears Aside
I’ll begrudgingly lay off the cycle pessimism now and just give you some actual answers because it doesn’t make me immune to the cycle knowing when and what works; it just means I get sad about it ahead of time.
The current answer leans towards subtlety with texture rather than outright subtlety. Ribbed cotton or a blended wool that has some extra stitch to it in a color that compliments your pants’ hue but doesn’t exactly match it, creating a deliberate buffer between trouser and sock rather than one solid block of color from knee to shoe. Argyle is back too but good argyle is subtle nowadays, think charcoal argyle on gray, or dark navy on blue that’s only slightly lighter, not the bright green and yellow argyle your dad might’ve had in his golf bag ten years ago.
Length is more important than most care to admit. Over the calf has become slowly but surely the answer for anything that pairs with tailoring these days be it dress pants or chinos, or even just a nice pair of trousers and loafers because there’s nothing worse than when you sit down and some of your leg is flashing above your sock. Personally I ruined a pair of otherwise great linen pants at a wedding by learning that lesson too late.
Sat down for the ceremony, crossed my legs and realized forty minutes into the vows that anyone behind me could see about four inches of pasty leg shade between my sock and pant. Die inside. Don’t do it. Bought myself a pair of over the calf linen pants socks the moment I got home.
As for sneakers, no show has won that battle for the most part but low crew socks are finding their comeback moment too for anyone who hates their ankle getting sweaty during the summer months, pairing great with anything that’s on the thicker side or throwsback and retro in shape. The key there is bulk over visibility, a thin low cut crew sock that only brushes against the top of your shoe works just as well as no sock did back in 2015.
All of the above is temporary. Will not be this way in six months, maybe not even one. I’m just as guilty of buying into the cycle as the next guy. But it’s also what works now, and there’s something to be said for buying socks that fit the outfit you want to wear now instead of whatever version of “correct” you think will still be valid when the sock rotation finally hits relevancy again.
Ryan is a Nottingham resale obsessive who hunts secondhand trainers and streetwear, and can tell you which app, which search term and roughly which hour a good listing drops. He also knows how to check a pair is genuine.
