Sock trauma unearthed at Telstra Perth Fashion Festival 2014

I’ve finally surfaced after a weekend of fashion to bring you the first of several fashion posts, those with an aversion to fashion should avert their eyes now. The first show I went to was 3,300 Miles at Fashion Paramount (Perth Concert Hall), where I learnt that nomads wear socks and uncovered a long forgotten sock trauma.

Telstra Perth Fashion Festival © The Ponder Room

Okay not nomads per se but NOM*d the Kiwi designer. In my defence behavioural theory dictates that consumers have adapted to their fast pace of lives by employing various techniques including speed reading. In our haste we’ve learnt to replace words that have been missed out of sentences, and letters out of words. Besides I quite like the image of nomads roaming about the plains wearing socks, and if NOM*d is involved they’d be wonderfully groovy socks at that.

Telstra Perth Fashion Festival
© The Ponder Room

As the models glided down the runway my eyes were drawn to their socks for some reason. Perhaps, I pondered, it was a throwback to my teenage years. I went to a high school that had a summer uniform which included socks … knee-high white socks to be precise. You can probably see where this is going.

Telstra Perth Fashion Festival
© The Ponder Room

For roughly six months of the year, five days a week, from the ages of 12 to 17 I waged war against white socks.

Telstra Perth Fashion Festival
© The Ponder Room

School policy dictated that said socks reside just below the knees at ALL times.

Peer policy counted that, requiring us to push our socks all the way down until they languished floppy around our ankles. Not to do so would render the wearer an instant social outcast.

For six months of the year, five days a week, for five years, my life was punctuated with the refrain ‘You, pull your socks up.’ The chastising wasn’t limited to the teachers, the year 12 students got right into the ‘sock duty’ powers they’d been awarded.

As a result of this past ‘sock trauma’ I must pass on my sincere apologies to NOM*d for my lack of ability to describe their unique designs in any detail, the socks however are another story.