This is one pair you don’t want to lose in the dryer.
These $500 multicolored hand-crocheted socks from Rodarte — the most expensive leggings in the world — are an extreme example of how the once-lowly cotton sweat sock has risen to the height of fashion this fall.
The high price is due in part to the materials — a combination of silky mohair yarn and soft alpaca wool — and to a designer label favored by the likes of First Lady Michelle Obama, Natalie Portman and Kirsten Dunst.
If the high-priced hosiery is too much, you can slum it with $170 hand-knit Pendleton Woolen socks, $220 Rachel Comey leather socks or $145 stirrup-style ones from Cacharel.
Socks became a prized accessory last spring, when designers like Givenchy and Chloe put them on the runway. For fall, city fashionistas have started pairing heavy, chunky socks with open-toed shoes and dresses.
New York’s most stylish are taken with the trend.
“I wore a black ruffle skirt with gray socks; it looks like a sophisticated schoolgirl,” said Rosemarie Terenzio, who runs her own press-relations firm, RMT PR, and lives in Murray Hill. She owns six pairs of socks over $50 each from ho siery boutique Fogal and a $120 pair from Net-A-Porter online.
She insists her lavish leggings are worth the money. “They last forever, and they look amazing and feel comfortable. If you think about all the times you buy cheap socks and six months later they have holes in it, these don’t,” she said.
Other New Yorkers aren’t so sure. “I read fashion magazines to crack myself up for this very reason right here,” says Christa Hylton of Brooklyn. “Five hundred dollars? Really?”
Every popular high-end retailer now has its version of the absurdly priced sock. Prada has $155 cable-knit numbers, Barneys New York has a line starting at $100 by Maria La Rosa, and Bergdorf Goodman has Marcoliani socks for $125 that sold out in 16 days, according to the designer’s sales manager.
Even men are slipping into style. British-textile company Moxon Huddersfield is selling its line of cashmere socks for $400. Ralph Lauren’s cashmere retails for $200.
But will you be able to pay off your credit-card bill before the trend ends? Elle editor Kate Davidson Hudson doesn’t think so.
“The open-toe [shoe with] sock trend is very season-specific, and by the end of the fall, the trend is most likely to look dated or passé,” she said.
Additional reporting by Jennifer Patryn