Summer may be synonymous with easy living, but unless you’re getting dressed for the beach or a backyard BBQ, looking good while keeping cool can be hard. On the one hand, you want to be wearing as little as possible, and on the other (except in very few specific situations), you need to wear clothes. Ever has it been thus. There’s no better illustration of the opposing forces at play than the eternal conundrum of socks. Wear them, and your feet could become hot and sweaty. Don’t wear them and your heels might blister, or worse still, your shoes could start to stink. And what kind of socks should you wear with shorts, anyway? In a better world, perhaps, the no-show sock could have been the perfect solution, protecting shoes from sweat and odors while letting your ankles breathe freely. Unfortunately, they’re more likely to end up balled beneath your toes. Also—for reasons modern science has yet to fully explain—they give everyone the ick. So where does that leave us as we enter the sweaty, humid days of summer?
“For me sockless is okay but in, like, a very narrow, specific way,” says Brendon Babenzien, the founder of menswear label Noah and the creative director of J.Crew’s men’s department. “The context is very much, where are you going? What are you wearing? What's your day?” For Babenzian, who grew up near the coast on Long Island, going sockless evokes the carefree swagger of the surfers, skaters, and assorted beach bums of his youth, and is best suited to a casual vibe. “It's sockless with loafers. It's occasionally sockless in a canvas sneaker, but even then, it depends on the day because, like, canvas sneakers get kind of stinky,” he says. Either way, he is a hard pass on no-shows. “I’ve never liked them. It's like, I want to look like I'm not wearing socks, but I actually am. And something about that doesn't sit well with me.”
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