WHITE RIOT

WHITE SOCK SCENE REVISTED

PAUL WELLER STEPPING OUT 1982-ISH

White socks became style short hand for precinct dickhead loiterer  by the mid-Eighties. Yet recently I’ve been loving them, emphasising particularly stush shoes and providing a striking graphic white boarder between trouser. Equating to explicitly in-your-face sock-itude with dark suits, for jeans white socks are simply a fresh-retro lick that hypes up my snaffles. But they don’t just raise a shoe profile. They raise eyebrows.  And questions of romantic revisionist misappropriation, as various white sock men are walking the white line. Wrote this Summer 2019 and GQ published slices of it, bless ‘em (clicky).

THE SPECIALS

BLACK & WHITE UNITE

Synonymous with Eighties style, the decade decreed fundamentally bad (by popularist pedestrian style conscience) white socks remain controversial. A musician client I’ve enabled into Anderson&Sheppard Fox flannel chalk stripe suit & Prada penny loafers with white socks suffers fans and strangers slating his perceived sock wrongness. For a tiny bit of man-hosiery, white socks are freighted with historical reference and issues. They are taboo, vilified as pure naffness by many. Growing up wearing them at the very beginning of The Eighties, I’m find this scenario compelling and useful.

BIRK WEARS WHITE SOX

GOOGLE ADAM & THE ANTS. THEN ITS FUNNY

They weren’t always naff.  They were edgy. The flash of a white sock highlights fancy work, and strong links with dance subcultures exist. In Ska/Skinhead scenes Loakes tassel loafers with white socks and Sta-Press, Levi 501’s or tonic suits were a staple move. Check “The Specials” seminal album cover, and even the black/white Two Tone record label logo: A natty rude boy in clipped suit, neat loafers and white socks, bopping with rock-steady attitude.

LOAFER SERVING SUGGESTION

CLUE’S IN THE TITLE

I tried to channel this with Ravel loafers I got for school and wore with white towelling socks when I could (avoid bollockings). My second pair had slits cut out of top panels allowing white socks to peep through. Ruthless bullying ensued. A repeated pattern.

ALL THE CODES

DOUBLE STYLE

Soul Boys too wore wide pleated high waist “Bowie” pants, little slip on’s and white towelling socks. Unperturbed nearly 40 years later, white sock styling mechanics work like this. They jar, confuse and provide a useful edge. Dark strides- white socks- dark shoes look stark. Jeans and loafers (or Dr.Martin shoes) look crispy and retro-street, (with black Bass Weejuns loafers they are double  50’s Ivy League).  Drop a neutral light pant with white sox and black shoes. Done right, white socks  work graphically as a bit of styling punctuation particularly when deployed with dark, hard looks. The white boarder turns your trousers and dark shoes in sartorial exclamation mark.

WHITE CITY

AS IN SITTY ON THE FLOOR?

NO?

CHARLIE BOY STYLED MY ME FOR AW19 TING

White socks work well as a punchy twist of for black tie/cocktail style. See Michael Jacksons Off The Wall Album cover for Tux x white sock luminescence. (Its okay to reference as was before he’d properly nonced into anyone). My preferred ammo are Tabio short ribbed models, but for evening they do a optic white pique number.

MINOR MISDEMEANOR

COMPARATIVELY

 Revisionist disclaimer alert: Most blokes in white socks in the Eighties looked shite. Dickheads with horrid mullets, vile tache’s, and bleached jeans with pokey grey slip-ons and white towelling socks. Kev’s, we’d call them. So for clarity, this is misappropriation through rose tinted deely boppers. I’m not stood alone in the white sock revival-ist cult bus stop though.

HEDI DOES IT

SLIIMANES CELINE AW19

Certain trendy types are wearing actual white sports socks with Gucci loafer mules- a faux chav lick. Other trendies in ugly clumpy black shoes wear school girl white socks in manner of “Ja’mie, Private School Girl”. One particulary trendy bod however, fashion designer Hedi Slimane, currently doing his thing at Celine, always deftly references British subculture (as a major factor in his MO). White socks are in the mix big time for Celine AW19 men’s. Psycho Billy Robot styles shoes (in plane black or leopard pony skin) or Rude Boy tassel loafer hybrids are all presented against gleaming white almond rocks. Slimane actually knows these hallowed style culture codes.

LEATHER. WHITE. LEOPARD

MORE CELINE AW19.

Although am bang into white socks now, must be clear this is pseudo quaint reverse revivalist shit. I bet a-load of white towelling sock Paul Calf-a-likes never chased Hedi down the high street shouting, “Oi, Slimane, come ‘ere you cunt and we’ll hang you off the fucking bypass bridge by your pixie boots”. Just saying.  In the early eighties there was no such thing as a white sock safe space.

 Stubbs out.

BACK WHEN I WAS BUSY

I’D WALK ABOUT LIKE THIS