More and more, socks are becoming a niche industry in Boston.
"Traditional socks are boring, our socks will brighten up your day."
FEAT Socks is now live on Kickstarter, a company founded by three UMass grads to inject some personality into the ubiquitous white tube sock.
"Other sock companies have cool designs, but they are stitched in," Taylor Offer, who founded the company with classmates Parker Burr and Elijah Grundel, told me. "Our color gets on the sock through a sublimation heat transfer, not stitched. This allows us to have way more vibrant colors and intricate designs without any fade after washing."
These are not your standard polka dots or stripes, which is exactly the point. Current designs include Freaky Tikis, Woodstocks, Cotton Candies, Peacocks, Smurfs and Green Monstah, to name a few. Socks, once a forgotten staple of function, are now prime real estate upon which wearers can project a piece of their personality, be it while wearing a power suit at a meeting or a bathing suit at the beach. And they've never been more in vogue. Right now, reports a Times articles titled "What your socks say about you," the Instagram hashtag "sockgame" has an impressive 342,961 pictures associated with it.
FEAT is the latest Boston apparel company to turn its attention to socks. Recently, Neon Bandits debuted, intent on cornering the "action lifestyle" market saturated mostly by bros. Ministry of Supply, known for its tech'd-out button down shirts, produces socks now, too, featuring ground coffee beans designed to fight odor.
There are so many great sock options, in fact, that Jonathan Coons, founder of New England Fashion Brands, recently launched a site aimed at curating the best of the best, called A Man Among Socks. One featured brand, coming in July, is Noble Stitch, a Connecticut-based company founded by a 15-year-old offering crowdsourced designs of casual, bamboo fiber socks.
"The world of men's socks has grown exponentially over the past five-plus years," said Coons. "Men's fashion as a whole has grown at alarming yet exiting rates. Socks are an outlet, socks are a way to express yourself. Its completely individual, and there is something out there for everyone."
FEAT currently has funding of $10,105, with 24 days remaining to hit its goal of $25,000. With a successful campaign, Offer said, they plan to unlock 20 additional designs: "We have a lot of interest from huge retailers about rolling out our socks in their stores, but they want more designs."
Socks are a simple wardrobe staple with near-limitless possibilities for customization, from fit to fabric, colors to designs. They're also benefitting from the current fixation on performance-based apparel being brought into everyday life. As the consumer demands clothing that can keep up with their active lifestyles, it's only fitting socks would get an overhaul along with everything else.
'The resurgence of 'Made in America' has really bolstered US men's fashion," added Coons, "and the sock world is seeing this as well."
