It’s a little thing, I know. Why worry about what colour your socks are when you’re pitching a multi-million dollar proposal later this morning, or going to an interview for a job you really, really want. “Don’t I have better things to worry about?”
Yes, you do have better things to worry about. So don’t worry if your Mickey Mouse socks distract the interviewer from your well-crafted and enlightening reply to the “So tell me about yourself?” question. Just get it right with this simple rule:
Match your belt to your shoes. Match your socks to your pants.
If you’re wearing brown shoes, wear a brown belt. If you’re wearing black pants, wear black socks. Yes, brown shoes & belt go with black pants. If the belt and shoes match, it works. Plus, matching your socks to your pants is that you look taller.
Look around you. I worked with a bunch of engineers, so finding all the different permutations and combinations as people struggled with what shoes to wear was easy. You may have to go further afield to find the same variety I did.
One school of thought argues that you want to match your socks to your shoes to “make a clean line from the toe to the cuff”. This runs the risk of invoking the “bootie” effect. This is where you look like you’re wearing ankle boots, or worse, mukluks.
They go on to argue that this is the more “cost-effective” solution since you’ll need fewer different colours of socks. This is a specious argument. I’ve always advocated that buying the best quality you can afford pays off in the long run. This is especially true for good quality clothing, which can last a life time. You get what you pay for.
Another source argued that natural or flesh toned socks go with anything. I’m scratching my head to figure out how looking like you’re not wearing socks fits into a professional environment. I can only imagine this was a copy & paste error. Maybe they were using text from a woman’s fashion guide.
Nothing will throw off a good-looking suit like a pair of white socks. Save those for the gym. Same goes for the red, fluorescent orange, or yellow & black striped socks. You may believe they show your character. What they are saying on your behalf while you’re not looking is “I’m not quite grown up yet.” Same goes for the cartoon character ties, but that’s a different topic.
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