And Fedoras are the New Boxer Shorts

It's official!  Socks are the new ties.  I know this because I saw an advertisement with the words "Socks are the new ties!" emblazoned across it.  To emphasise the point the lower leg of a no doubt handsome and well chiselled model was pictured brazenly flaunting an ankle and even a hint of calf covered in a piece of material that looked as though it had been patterned by forcing someone to drink several tins of different coloured paint and using socks to mop up the ensuing vomit.

I must admit I'm delighted to hear that socks are the new ties.  Dressing for work has become just that little bit easier now that instead of fiddling with a tie I can just sling a sock around my neck and be ready for the office.  Ties were always an irritating irrelevance.  I realise my sex is not famous for its subtlety but at what point did we decide it was a great idea to adorn our business clothes with brightly coloured arrows pointing at our penises?  The only real use a tie had was it gave you something to strangle your co-workers with if a meeting got a little out of hand.

Socks on the other hand were the ultimate in utilitarian practical wear.  Humble, retiring, without flash or adornment they went through each day quietly protecting our feet from the ravages that our overly fancy footwear attempted to visit upon them.  Socks said nothing about a man except "I'm wearing socks" whereas the pushy, narcissistic tie advertised the owners, school, political affiliations, sexual orientation and in extreme cases what communicable diseases he was likely to be suffering from.  Socks came in grey, black or navy blue.  One could glance at a man's socks and still suffer from the delusion that he was a restrained and tasteful individual.  Once your eyeballs hit his tie all bets were off.

Now, however, socks are the new ties.  Despite pathetic jokes about wrapping socks around my neck I know what this means.  It means that clothing manufacturers have decided to squeeze every last dollar from their hapless customers by getting their semi slaves in Bangladesh and elsewhere to run up brightly coloured, terribly fashionable foot coverings so that on those occasions when an inch of sock is revealed between trouser leg and shoe half the people in the room are going to come down with an epileptic seizure.

There seems to be nothing so prosaic that it can't be reimagined as a tasteless and monstrously expensive fashion symbol.  If you want to know why we don't have flying cars or a cure for cancer the answer is to be seen in these socks.  The brightest minds of our generation are fully employed trying to persuade the rest of us to wear items that our ancestors would have used to clean up after the dog.  I would have more to say on this subject but I'm currently suffering from acute blood poisoning after inadvertently stabbing myself in the neck with my sock pin.