White socks with sandals? How what was a fashion faux pas is all the rage thanks to Gen Z

Long mocked, white socks are now firmly back in fashion. No longer are they seen as a hallmark of Germans abroad when paired with sandals. These days, white socks are often worn with shorts so that the brand logo can be clearly seen, whether that be Nike, Adidas or Puma. White socks are no longer seen as a fashion faux pas. Style influencers from Generation Z – those born between the mid-1990s and the early 2010s – from pop star Billie Eilish to actor Paul Mescal are wearing them. Meanwhile, short trainer socks, previously loved by millennials – born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s – are staying stuck at the bottom of our sock drawers, especially ones that make it look as though you are not wearing any socks at all. “Instead of socks you can barely see, the trend now is for socks that can be seen from a mile away,” German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung says. At Milan Fashion Week, actor 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”. But that is another story – back to the socks. “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.” Socks of all kinds have been a fashion statement again for some time. Tennis socks are worn pulled up with trainers, smart loafers, Birkenstocks or trekking sandals, Schwarz says. In a streetwear context, “white socks are paired with sliders”. But should you always 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.” “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. 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 university fashion in the United States. “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,” Burde says. 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 they could be seen went well with the tapered trousers of the 1940s, which narrowed from the thigh to the ankle, or the slim-fit ankle-length trousers of Italian men’s fashion of the 1950s and ’60s. “In addition to being a part of the counterculture, white tennis socks retained a functional significance as a mass-produced item that belongs in the context of sportswear and casual wear,” Burde says. Starting in the 1950s, Casual Friday, in which workplaces relax their dress codes on Fridays, allowed middle-class US men to wear comfortable business wear, such as short-sleeved shirts, 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,” Burde says.

White socks with sandals? How what was a fashion faux pas is all the rage thanks to Gen Z

White socks are in vogue, with Gen Z stars from Billie Eilish to Paul Mescal wearing them – and the more exposed they are, the better