In the beginning there were scratchy plants and thorns, and humans made slipper socks from animal skins to protect their feet and ankles. Eventually they went to war, and protection became even more necessary.
Soldiers in ancient Greece wore sandals, but first wrapped their feet and legs with strips of cloth or skins. They called this Ace bandage apparel "sykhos." Roman soldiers used the same wrap and called it "soccus."
By the end of the Roman Empire, women wore tunics with flat shoes and long hose. Men sometimes wore short socks with their sandals, letting the tops of the socks flop stylishly over the sandal straps.
About 100 years later, by 570 A.D., some of the Frankish people covered their legs with woven wool stockings. Of course nylon wouldn't be invented for a couple of thousand years, so from this point on, much of the history of socks includes the description of garters or straps or other methods of holding up baggy hose.
At that time, and for centuries to come, men were the ones who revealed their legs. Men were the ones who made hosiery history.
During the reign of Henry VIII, men wore puffed breeches met by stockings just above the knee. Henry considered colorful garters to be his signature fashion statement.
During the reign of his daughter, Elizabeth I, stockings of knitted silk came into vogue. Men still wore bright colors. At the same time, in a countertrend, Puritans wore plain and sensible (and itchy) wool socks.
By the 1600s, silk weaving employed thousands of people in France, but the French court was importing silk stockings from China because, according to one diary, "Chinese patterns were the most charming in the world."
Around the time of the French Revolution, the court, belatedly, tried to tone it down a bit. While men still wore colored stockings, most fashion frills, including patterned stockings, disappeared. After the Revolution, men's formal wear became even more restrained. Black trousers ended just above the ankle, revealing subtly embroidered stockings or an openwork sock over plain white stockings.
In England, in 1861, the death of Queen Victoria's beloved Albert plunged menswear into a period of mourning from which it never fully emerged. Men's socks have been plain and dark ever since.
But then women took up the cause of fanciful footwear. By the turn of the 20th century, fashion magazines reported yearly trends in women's stockings. Some years stockings matched the dress. Other years they matched the shoes.
Women's stockings were striped or embroidered or had lace insets and were generally quite fancy, until World War I. Then they were made of lisle.
Stockings brightened again in the '20s, when women's skirts got short. But after World War II, when nylon had been invented and women were entering the workforce, their hosiery became almost as traditional as men's.
In the early 1960s, first lady Jackie Kennedy was one of the world's most well-dressed women, and what she wore on a November day in Dallas was typical of the times. She wore plain, sheer hose with her pink Chanel suit. A few days later, at her husband's funeral, she wore black, and her stockings were still sheer, perhaps in a slightly darker shade.
But then, a year after JFK's death, Jackie Kennedy Onassis was seen wearing stockings inappropriate to her skirt. She showed up for lunch with a friend wearing black nylons with a light brown cotton skirt, and that (plus the fact that her blouse was sheer enough to reveal a too-dark slip) was enough to start a rumor that she was depressed, not emerging from her grief.
Only a few years later, though, she was obviously fine and wearing mini-skirts and patterned tights like the rest of America. By the late '60s, even grown women wore knee socks — or pink paisley tights to match their pink paisley turtlenecks.
And what will 2004 bring? Linh Tran, who sells women's hosiery at Nordstrom, says she sold more textured hose this December than any month since she's worked there. The weave and patterns of the new stockings and tights are bold and bright. On the day the Deseret Morning News interviewed Tran, however, she was wearing traditional black trouser socks with her black slacks.
Sources: "What People Wore : 1,800 Illustrations from Ancient Times to the Early Twentieth Century," by Douglas Gorsline
"Beneath It All : A Century of French Lingerie," by Farid Chenoune
"Two Centuries of Costume in America, 1620-1820," by Alice Earle
"Fashion Sourcebooks," a book series by John Peacock
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