Almost always out of sight and often shunned as smelly little biofactories, socks were once the forgotten stepchildren of the performance-wear market.

Cheap cotton socks by the plastic bagful sulked on store walls beside their thick, itchy wool brethren, as customers thoughtfully considered how highly engineered fabrics would protect them from the ankles up.

Perhaps sometime after the rise of the Beastie Boys, but before the release of Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik, sock-making hit a golden age. Minds, materials, and machines clicked, and people realized the comfort of their feet was important and worth more than a few bucks.