Where can you find them?
Stores like Blue Skies on Frazier Avenue and Southside’s Merchants on Main have a wide variety of funny, funky socks for customers to peruse and purchase.If you want to shop even more local, Goodhew’s and Sockwell’s 100 percent Merino wool socks can be found at stores from Rock/Creek and Fast Break to Embellish and Yacoubian Tailors.
As workplaces – and people – across the country embrace a more casual style of dress, many men have turned from neckties to another, unassuming article of clothing to express themselves: socks.
“I don’t wear a tie that often,” says Jim Markley, co-owner of local sock brands Goodhew and Sockwell. “But you want something to depict your personality. So instead of a bold tie, it’s bold socks.”
Although Markley has been working with socks since the ’90s (he worked for SmartWool for many years), the population-at-large’s discovery that a sock does not have to be simple is a much more recent one.
“We saw an opportunity for a lifestyle brand that was made in America with homegrown Merino wool,” he says of his and his business partner Thomas Lee’s decision to start Goodhew in 2008.