Dad reckons that sock sizing used to be straightforward. “Small, medium, large, job done”, he complained at Christmas last year, waving one of my new socks around like a smoking gun. “Shoe size divided by two back in my day, no charts, no bloody nothing.” I told him it’s ideas like that which have resulted in three drawers worth of socks pooling round my ankles like tiny deflated balloons or cutting off my circulation by lunchtime. Dad’s decade also brought us shoulder pads and Austin Allegros, so forgive me if I don’t listen to him about socks.
Because sock size isn’t one number, that’s the thing nobody explains when you’re an adult buying a three pack without thinking. Sock size is two things battling against each other and nine times out of ten men are only told about one of those things.
Your actual foot size, not the shoe size you convinced yourself you were years ago
Hold up, first thing I should probably confess. I’ve been wearing size 9 shoes and therefore socks for approximately eleven years because that’s what I bought when I was nineteen, they sort of fit okay and then I never thought about it again. I’m actually somewhere between a 9 and a 10, as properly measured by heel to toe length while standing up, not stretching your foot out at some ridiculous angle while sitting on the sofa like I did when I first checked this at home. Shoes fool you slightly on that front thanks to shoe construction, sock thickness, insoles and how some brands round their half sizes up or down based on their own internal maths that no-one has ever successfully explained to me.
Socks don’t give you that lee-way on sizing like shoes do, so if you’ve been working off the shoe size you THINK you are, rather than the foot-length you ACTUALLY are, you’ve probably been buying slightly incorrect socks for years and just lived with it because a sock that’s too big/ too small just doesn’t send you hurtling back to Tesco’s like a pair of shoes will.
The second thing that swearsingleather „sock size is half your shoe size“ theory fails to mention is that most sock brands don’t actually size their socks in UK shoe sizes.
They give you a range, usually something like 6-11 or 9-12. One size that’s supposedly supposed to magically fit the foot length of someone wearing a size 6 all the way up to someone wearing a size 11. That’s not one size fit everyone, that’s no actual idea of size at all. Any sock that’s worth calling properly made will tell you the actual foot length their sock fits somewhere on the packaging or the sock itself. Sizes 4-7, 26-28cm. If they don’t make that obvious to you up front, it’s telling you all you need to know about how much effort they put into the sock itself. It took me until I was thirty four years old to actually measure my foot properly. Phone to my ear (don’t judge me), sat on the floor with a ruler, never occurred to me I should know my actual foot length when I spent half my life in shoes. It’s 26.5cm. Knowing that number alone has done more for the fit of my socks than every “One Size Fits Most” pack I blindly bought before.
And please, if you are between sizes, don’t just buy the smaller size because mates told you it’ll stretch. Save yourself the agony I went through for years with one brand I won’t name (love you anyway!) and just go one size up. My heel would slip out of the sock after about four hours of wear because it was basically rubbing against the top of my foot in order to escape. Get the length right. everything else is arguing about cake toppings on a cake that doesn’t have the right flavour.
The elasticity of the fabric versus how much fabric has actual stretch in it, which no-one ever thinks about
This is where it all gets a bit more petulant, because length isn’t much use to you if your sock has nowhere left to stretch. Throw on a cheap cotton sock with about 1% elastane in it and you’ve got a sock that fits your foot nicely in the morning but by hours finds a new home on someone who’s foot isn’t shaped nearly as funny as yours. It just loses all shape, collapses down around your ankle and looks like it’s given up trying to be a sock. This isn’t really a sock size issue but believe me, it FUCKING LOOKS LIKE IT IS. Nine times out of ten when you buy a sock that feels like a weird shape by lunchtime you’ve actually just bought a sock made of the wrong materials, not a wrong size. Cotton smocks up like nobody’s business, regardless of what size you’re wearing. Find a sock with a good amount of nylon/elastane blend that can unwind and refold over your actual foot rather than just stay like one shape sewn into garment.
I took the arse-hat approach with a twelve pack from a supermarket that shall remain nameless because supermarkets don’t pick the stockings that fill their shelves, sadly that’s what we’ve all been resigned to at that price point. Ten hours in and socks down around my ankles, heel half sliding out like I was trying to fit one foot into a sock that was suddenly too small. Contrast that to the pair I’m currently wearing that’s been in my drawer rotation for three years. Same basic size small enough to stretch. Enough stretch in the material actually blended through the sock that it can work with my foot rather than holding onto the shape of the sock mould it was made in.
You also, automatically exclude any socks that claim to go up to a UK men’s 11 because it can’t be done. Don’t believe me? Measure your foot. Then try and stretch a flat piece of elastic 26cm, then try and stretch it again from 29cm. You’ll see what I mean.
This is also where that lovely “One Size Fits 6-11″ trick falls apart when you apply actual logic to it for more than thirty seconds. For a sock to stretch sufficiently to fit that entire range it’s 100% reliant on the elastane content keeping everything pulled tight. There’s no way a universally knitted sock is going to comfortably fit someone with a size 6 foot and a size 11 foot without a bunch of stretchy goodness holding the whole thing together.
But when a brand tells you it fits men size 6-11, what they’re really telling you is everything about the sock is done trying to fit your actual foot and puts all of it’s effort into how much the sock can stretch.
And here’s the kicker.
Stretch doesn’t last forever. Every time you wash a sock every elastic fibre is stretched just a tiny bit more than it’s supposed to. Wear that sock ten times and put it back in the drawer and it never quite regains thatoomphf it had when it was brand new. Wash that sock fifty times and you’re well on your way to rubber sock city, population: your miserable feet.
No dad, sock size never was just shoe size halved. And it’s never just the size written on the pack. It’s actually knowing what size you are, buying a sock with enough interesting fibres in it to actually fit your foot by mid-afternoon. Get those two things right and you forget you’re even wearing socks. And if you ask me that’s what’s half the fun.
