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Before it was fashionable to be 'alternative' and fishnet tops were sold everywhere the easiest way to get one was to get a pair of fishnet tights, rip a hole in the crotch and stick it over your head, with your arms going where the legs should go. While I was never desperate enough for a new top to ruin a good pair of tights the ease and effectiveness of this trick did appeal.
While wearing tights as a top is a fun and clever idea, I'm less convinced about the trend for wearing stripy socks on arms, a fad which only shows hesitant signs of disappearing.
This freaky misappropriation of footwear was first noticeable in about 1994, somehow it was seen to be a grunge thing - I suppose the whole not washing does follow on naturally. Following the decline of grunge as a hip fashion statement the outcasts that were Jack off Jill and Rachel Stamp fans latched on to it for a couple of years. As these tended to be barely legal females with a tendency towards pink and multiple layers of clothing the socks blended almost unnoticeable to the blissfully ignorant mainstream population.
Just as these kids had grown out of wearing stripy socks on their arms and the practise was fading back into obscurity along came Avril and her clones. Avril adopted wearing stripy socks as arm decor because it showed her true punk status. Even ignoring the fact that Avril is less punk than cottage cheese, there is the baffling question of how being unable to wear socks correctly makes you punk.
My curiosity led me to ask this question to the sock clad faux-punk guy standing outside of Starbucks in Camden, he looked puzzled for a minute then realised that he might be failing to look truly hardcore so yelled "it's like anarchy dude!! It shows we rock!!" I asked for clarification on how failing to wear socks on feet would change established political institutions and ease restraints on personal liberty and he looked blank before stomping off to pay over the odds for a badly bootlegged Rancid t-shirt.
The next band off the corporate conveyer belt following Avril was Evanescence, who also adopted the stripy socks on arms trick. This time it was to show they were truly gothic. In the case of Evanescence it is possible that the fact that stripes are slimming could have played a part it their role as arm warmers. Regardless of the reasons the fact that two stupidly high profile bands had adopted stripy arm socks as their only distinguishing mark ensured that a veritable sock army followed in their wake, with even high street fashion shops aimed at underage whores stoking a wide variety of stripy socks all designed to be worn on arms.
These capitalist socks came in a garish array of green and black, pink and black, yellow and black, red and black, and the more traditional white and black for truly hardcore kids to demonstrate tier affinity to something or another. To be entirely fair The Birthday Massacre have been known to sport stripy socks on arms and even though they make pretty music they do look daft although significantly better and decidedly more gothic than Evanescence.
At the present time you can walk down any high street in the UK and it will be positively mundane to see at least six people of indiscernible gender (due to their hair being greased over their faces in an attempt to emulate the new hip band) with a sock on either arm, for it is now so common place to wear socks on arms that wearing a sock on only one arm shows that you mean 'it.'
The nature of 'it' is not important; all that is required is that you know you have 'it' and everyone can see you have 'it' by the stripy sock(s) adorning your arm(s). Stripy socks have replaced backwards red baseball caps are the new badge of the cool kids; all of a sudden Fred Durst does not seem quite so bad.
