The Italian designer Miuccia Prada almost always includes socks — often slouchy and a little off-kilter — in the runway shows for her brands, Prada and Miu Miu. The accessories are an emblem of her commitment to what she’s called “making ugly appealing” and a testament to the influence of her longtime collaborator and friend Manuela Pavesi, who helped shape the Prada look until her death in 2015. “It’s something nobody really considers, but socks aren’t that expensive and you can really change your aesthetic with them,” says the Paris-based fashion commentator Tuba Valon, 34, who collects Prada socks. Her favorites include a tartan footless pair from the fall 2016 collection — “they’re absurd,” she says — and a floral-print mohair pair from fall 2017.
Of course, Miu Miu and Prada aren’t the only brands to use socks in unexpected ways. The British creative director Katie Grand loved to incorporate ankle socks into the looks she styled for Marc Jacobs in the 2010s. Anna Sui and Comme des Garçons have consistently put socks of all kinds on the runway to add tension to outfits. More recently, Simone Rocha, Shu Shu Tong and Chopova Lowena have offered girlish lace- and crystal-trimmed versions. During the recent fall 2025 shows, models wore sheer blue knee-highs at Marni and ribbed black over-the-knee socks at Louis Vuitton. Relatively affordable and increasingly available, statement socks are an easy entry point to experimentation.
“Somebody recently said to me that socks are like the punctuation mark at the end of a sentence,” says Jenni Lee, 37, the founder and creative director of the New York-based hosiery and loungewear brand Comme Si, which launched in 2019 with Italian-made cashmere, wool, cotton and silk socks in distinctive colors such as “iris,” a dusty lilac, and “basil,” a deep forest green. Lee uses socks to add color to her own typically neutral outfits; they’re a subtle detail that others might not notice right away. The New York-based stylist Michelle Li, 30, also thinks of socks in grammatical terms, but as more of an em-dash: a way of creating a visual buffer between her hemlines and her shoes. Recently, she’s gravitated toward textured versions, including ribbed gray knee-highs worn with a miniskirt and mules or nude pink polka-dot ankle socks paired with ballet flats. “Don’t think too hard about the footwear,” she says, “because socks can adapt to whatever you’re trying to wear.” Below are a few pairs to help add personality to your spring wardrobe.
