A Brief History of Knitted Socks

The history of hand-knitted socks seems to begin in thirteenth-century Islamic Egypt, and fragments of these early blue and white stockings, knitted in cotton, can be found in several museum collections. However, in Western costume, socks and stockings were most commonly made from cloth cut on the bias until around 1590 when knitted stockings, often made from silk, replaced them. Worn by men with their breeches, stockings were knitted in bright colors such as yellow and adorned with colored silk, and sometimes gold, thread. Knitted socks and stockings, made by hand and by machine, have been a part of our wardrobe ever since.

During the eighteenth century, white stockings for men in the upper classes were de rigueur, and when women began showing a little ankle in the late part of that century, stockings became decorative, being ribbed or embroidered. At the turn of the century and into the early nineteenth century, men’s stockings could be white, colored, striped, plain or fancy knit. Throughout most of the nineteenth century, stockings for women were rarely seen and were generally black, knitted in cotton or wool for daywear and in silk for the evening.

Changes in sock style began in the early twentieth century. Men began wearing black silk socks for evening, and casual socks were patterned, striped or spotted. Argyle became the rage during the 1920s, and these and other patterned socks were sported by men with their plus fours or knickerbockers, both on and off the golf course. Nylon was developed during the 1930s and women largely abandoned other styles of socks in favor of the new “artificial silk” stockings. When pants became the wardrobe piece of choice for many women, garter belts and stockings once again made way for knitted socks.

In recent American history, hand knitting socks has become a craze of enormous proportions. In her book Folk Socks, Nancy Bush reports that an article written by Joan Thirsk estimated that during the sixteenth century, somewhere between nine and eleven million pairs of socks were knitted per year in the United Kingdom. While American knitters may not be quite that prolific, a search for knitted sock patterns on the Internet returns hundreds of thousands of results, and a search on sock yarn turns up even more links! Walk into any yarn shop and you’ll find a whole section devoted to sock yarn. It is available in wool, acrylic, silk, bamboo and wool blended with everything from cashmere to soy. Ankle, calf or knee length; one-, two-, or multicolored; cabled, ribbed or lacy; if you can imagine them, you can knit them.

If you’d like to research knitting further, see the Bibliography on; several fine books for answers to questions you may encounter in your pursuit of knitting perfection can be found there.