The other week, after purchasing a fetching-but-sturdy pair of Swedish Hasbeens sandals, I was taken aback when not one, not two, but three different people suggested that the shoes would be “cute with socks.” Is it time to take sides?
The socks-and-sandals trend, first spied on the Spring runways accompanying Miu-Miu and Burberry, has divided…well, the sort of population who cares about this kind of things. (Which is to say: the Civil War, this ain’t.) And indeed, it has all the makings of classic high-fashion trickle-down hot-button: an on-the-face-of-it terrible idea. “Socks and sandals,” after all, hearkens back to things like German dads and the sort of arrogant nerd who also enjoys sporting shorts in blizzards to make some kind of obscure point. It’s ripe for dismissal and criticism – to say nothing of the very valid charge that what may look whimsical and fetching on a gangly Latvian teenager is quite another matter on an actual leg, on an actual street, in front of people whose knowledge of the world is not Vacuum-packed in back-issues of Vogue.
The New York Post went so far as to make the “controversy” the subject of a “she-said/she-said” in which dueling fashion correspondents, respectively, excoriated and lauded the trend. The “con” camp dismissed the trend as the purview of “trend slaves” and declared that “there are things that just don’t belong together – steak and ketchup, Bobby and Whitney, and socks and sandals. Blech.” On the contrary, said her colleague: why not experiment and save the foot from sandal-chafe at the same time?
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