If you were a teenage boy who saw the ska revival come in around 1979, you wore tasselled loafters and Harrington jackets, then you wore white socks.
If you were me, you carried on doing this through the years, throughout the New Romantic era while everything went jazz funk and Haircut 100 and all you owned were pairs and pairs of chewing gum white terry toweling socks. There's a great photo of me c.1982 at Guildford Castle wearing blue and black stripey drainpipes with white socks and black suede soul slippers. What a style icon.
I think it was only when I returned to boarding school for the last year of boarding sixth form someone a mean girl took a look at my feet and said witheringly, 'still wearing white socks then?', that they finally bit the dust. She was probably right. This was 1983 after. Though Michael Jackson wore them. Nuff said.
How did this ghastly fashion get to be all the rage? Whenever there's talk of reviving things from the Eighties, white slocks and grey plastic soul slippers are not on the agenda. It's something best forgotten.
When I think back, I really should have left then in 1980. I was from the provinces, we didn't have much of a clue. When did this fashion actually die out, and what sort of person wore them?
Your views please.
10 comments:
I wouldn't say I rival Charlie Watts when it comes to socks. However, they have played a big part in my life (!). That said, white socks had a very small window in the period you describe. But then it was well and truly shut. Painted shut. And boarded up. Never to be opened again. The return of white socks surely heralds the beginning of the 'End Of Days.'
I'm pretty sure we can blame some of it on Paul Weller.
I did football socks for years great colours and knee high, but switched to white (with slip ons and stretch jeans) around 82(ish). I would guess it evolved from the Mod/Rude Boy look into the Casual/Soul Boy wardrobe, which, was really an 80s update of Mod.
I bought of these earlier in the year, and for a splash of colour will with wear them with red Argyle socks. Although there's a danger of being mistaken for a Mason if you wear red socks.
And what about the stripy type for girls that were all the rage in the seventies. Ones that looked like a packet of refeshers?
...and had individual toes. Yes, I remember those Mondo.
Yes, remember that look well. Paul Weller caused many to sport the white sock, but no-one did it better. It wasn't me who stopped you wearing them was it? I hope I couldn't 'do' withering....
Further, I had the stripey ones with 'Bay City Rollers' down the side while my mother sported Mary Quant stripey knee socks.
Not you Hels, Melody Sutheran-Lott. Whatever happened to her. And have you de-Facebooked yourself?
Have no idea what happened to her or her sister. Yes, have 'defaced' myself, couldn't bear all the information about people's lives that I really didn't need. Very liberating!
Ben from Curiosity Killed the cat is wearing white socks and slip-ons in this Warhol-featuring nugget from as late as 1987.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6nL4NN2Qck&feature=player_embedded#at=208
White socks and Harrington jacket yes, slip on shoes no. Not quite old enough to know better, that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.
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