Traditionally it is said that your socks should match your pants. There it is. The old-school truth. But times they are a changin’ and I’m here to tell you that matching of the socks is in the foot of the wearer.

There are a variety of ways to consider your socks.

Socks match your pants

First off, the traditional. This is the place where your socks are made to match your suit/pants/denims/trousers. This is a tricky one in our time because that makes for boring socks. No one wants a boring sock. There are a very limited number of colors that allow you to branch out when you’re matching sock to pant. Mostly you’ll end up wearing brown, black, blue or grey socks. What you really want is colourful socks and this approach of pant to sock just wont allow for that.

This obviously changes if you’re the type of person who likes to wear pink polka dot pants. Then you’ve got choice in front of you.

It’s also very important to consider what shoes you choose to wear to compliment the pants and socks you’ve got on. Wearing black pants, black socks and then choosing a brown shoe will most often not work (there are exceptions to the rule, of course).

To summarise: Socks can match pants but be careful of your shoe choice.

Socks match your shoes

Historically this has been shunned as a no-no for a very simple reason. You don’t want to appear to be wearing a single-colored booty or Ugg looking situation. You’re an adult. Not an adolescent teenager or toddler wearing booties.

But things have started to change. It’s important to define what is meant by the word “match” in this scenario. We don’t want you to be wearing a blue shoe and a blue sock with blue pants (unless you’re really going for it). You could perhaps wear denims, with a blue and red sock and a shoe that has either blue or red in it. You’re highlighting colors, not matching them.

To summarize: If you’re matching shoes and socks, highlight colors, don’t match solid color socks to solid color shoes.

Socks match your accessories

This is the new way forward and a brave way it is. Men and women all over the world have decided that it’s time to wear colorful and fun socks. There are two ways to do this to make yourself feel OK with your choices.

Firstly - You can get over the concern about matching and wear whichever colorful sock catches your eye when you get dressed. We like this option and generally for us, dressing starts from the ground up. We build our entire day from the feeling of joy when we put on our loud, happy and comfortable bamboo socks.

Secondly - You can plan to match your socks to your accessories. Things like your ties, pocket squares, the cufflinks you’re wearing, the inner fabric of your jacket, the shoe laces on your shoes are all viable matching alternatives to the shoe and the pant leg. Do not go gently into that good and boring trap of tradition. Step out of the norms and match your socks to whatever the hell you want. But be sure that there is some intention behind your choice, even if it’s just to look crazy and feel good on a Monday morning.

How to match your socks - Conclusion

In short, you can match your socks to your pants, you highlight color in your shoes by wearing a corresponding sock or you can just forget it all and wear an accessory that you’d like to match your socks to.

Deep down we don’t care whether you’re matching your sock to hair color or to your underpants as long as your not wearing black socks and choose colorful socks, every time.