Suddenly, I don't feel like a dork anymore. Who knew crew socks could be so cool?
Me and Gen Z. Call us hip fashion plates if you must, but you will know us when you see us — by our socks.
I never thought I’d see this day, really. I thought it was my fate to sail the world battered by the cruel and unyielding tempests of the low-sock bloc that smirked at all us fogies who insisted on the comfort of crew socks over the admittedly more stylish faux-sockless look.
Crew socks were my generation’s wraparound sunglasses. Remember when you’d see some geezer wearing ear-to-ear plastic frames, with glass tinted so dark they made a black hole look like a calliope? And you’d think to yourself, no matter how old I get I’m not going to do THAT.
Yet, I guess, the freedom from barbecued eyeballs was worth the lost social capital of looking like a diseased insect. Crew socks were much the same, particularly if you are outdoors a lot. Ridicule is a small price to pay for protection against pine needles in your feet.
I held my ground, even against those who tried to change me and claimed I looked like a dork. And today I am proud to report that if you live long enough, one day you will be right in style.
“The debate has consumed the media in recent months,” writes The Washington Post. “Gen Z celebrities such as Kaia Gerber and Lori Harvey have been out and about sporting crew socks with sneakers and — in Sabrina Carpenter’s case — heels. Headlines warn about ‘toxic sock syndrome’ and a sock war between the generations, while fashion writers have shared advice on "how to up your sock game and take advantage of the crew sock trend.”
A photo of Carpenter backs this up, as she’s shown arriving at the Saturday Night Live set wearing crew socks with what are basically sandals, an act that not that long ago was the ghastly fashion equivalent of a serial killing.
(It should be noted that her outfit included a black top, bare midriff, short white skirt and a pair of spectacles that would have looked right at home on Ben Franklin, or maybe a 19th century Andover Latin teacher. The whole ensemble looked rather like it had been drawn out of a Powerball lottery machine.)
But today, writes Ellie Muir in the Independent, “If you wear no-show trainer socks, you are an avocado-eating millennial, and wearing them is basically a death knell for coolness.”
Avocado-eating? Never mind, what thrills me about this to no end is that all the smug millennials who made so much fun of dowdy old crew socks are now feeling the pain and suffering of being pointed to and giggled at by the younger generation that has taken their place.
“I find ankle socks really gross," says trendy designer Christopher Grove. “When I think about ankle socks, they’re weird and unnecessary, they’re like jeggings to me — like why are you printing a denim pattern on elastane?”
I’m going to level with you — I have no idea what he’s talking about. But he’s right. I always found the distance between ankle socks and putting your bare feet on the armrest of the seat in front of you on the airplane to be disturbingly short.
Some writers are saying this sock war is also a product of COVID, and the Zoom-meeting culture of comfort that has brought us the weird (but welcome) phenomenon of “dressy” sweatpants. Wherever it takes. I’m just happy to go out again with shorts and crew socks not as something I’ve just always done, but as a statement of high fashion.
And yet … who am I fooling? Society differentiates between intentional and passive frumpiness.
If you wear your grandfather’s crew socks and your founding fathers’ eyeglasses, and you do it on purpose, you are cool. If you wear crew socks just because that’s what you like to wear, you’re still a dork.
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Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Gen Z celebrities have made crew socks cool