Why you should wrap up your feet and cover your ankles with some nice warm socks this season (and every other one, too).

One of the most pervasive menswear trends of recent years is the non-wearing of socks, even when doing so completely flies in the face of reason. You know what we’re talking about – a cropped pair of trousers and a pair of white sneakers, with a knobbly ankle peeping out in between, is in 2016 one of the most familiar sights of stylish capitals worldwide, no matter how dreadful the weather or local climate, or how inappropriate the time of year. Of course, it’s all very well to show a bit of skin at the height of summer, when you’re strolling along la Croisette in Cannes (or similar), in a pair of debonair penny loafers. But when it gets to November and you’re still whipping out the invisible socks, it’s time to admit you have a problem.

How did we get here? The path of socklessness, in our opinion, has been largely influenced by the way clothes are presented in runway shows, where men’s designers have increasingly cropped their trousers in order to showcase their shoes to the maximum extent possible. That’s fine for them. You, on the other hand, are not trying to sell your shoes, but simply to wear them. And there’s also the matter of the weather – currently gearing up towards what promises to be another perishing winter. In fact, life, we’re sorry to inform you, is not a fashion show, despite what you may have seen on Instagram. So, really, there’s no need to deprive yourself of what we’re going to call (to pay homage to Dr Alex Comfort’s 1972 erotic manual) “The Joy of Socks”. Scroll down for three great ways to experience it this winter, and enjoy being one cosy footstep ahead of the general herd.

Corgi Sock Advent Calendar

Socks are one of the few things in life that you can, truly, never have enough of. Another one of those things (in our humble opinion at least), is holiday spirit. Whip them up together, fling them in a box, and divide that box into 24 chest-tighteningly exciting segments and you have Corgi and MR PORTER’s sock-vent calendar – a new type of advent calendar, available on site now, in which the lucky recipient is treated to a new pair of socks made by British brand Corgi (who have been experts in this field since 1892) on each day in the run up to the big day. This is a particularly pertinent gift for the perennially sockless man in your life. Perhaps a bit of festive cheer will jolt him out of this silly obsession?

It may have passed you by (especially, admittedly, if you have better things to do, such as go to work, etc), but the style world is currently all a-buzz about two designers in particular: Mr Demna Gvasalia of rebellious, street-inspired Parisian label Vetements and Mr Alessandro Michele, the current creative director of megabrand Gucci. Everything that these two produce is met with unanimous critical approval. But not all of it is so easy to wear on a day-to-day basis (call us old fashioned but there’s something about Mr Michele’s snake-embroidered distressed jeans, for example, that just says “weekend” to us). Thank goodness, therefore, for the sock, the perfect entry-level gateway into even the most rarefied of style vernaculars. Both Messrs Gvasalia and Michele have, in fact, been rather generous in this department for AW16, and we encourage you to enjoy the results, opting for street cred with Vetement’s devilishly ironic “sexual fantasies” socks, or indulging in a bit of gawky nostalgia with Gucci’s flecked wool, knee-high variations. Never will your feet have been so buzz-worthy.

Practitioners of classical rhetoric are reminded to always express themselves in threes – this figure of speech, called a tricolon, has something satisfyingly convincing about it. Can we really say that the same is true of socks? Oh go on then, why not. In any case this would explain why the MR PORTER team got so excited when these three-packs of colourful socks from Missoni turned up in the autumn uploads. Employing just about every colour available in the visible spectrum, these bundles of joy are a miniature encapsulation of everything that is brilliant and unique about the family-owned Italian master of knitwear, which since 1953 has been dazzling style connoisseurs with its futurist blend of stripes, space-dyed yarns and trademark zigzags. Representing the ultimate bang-for-buck both in terms of visual excitement and cost, they’re just the thing to bring some pep into your winter wardrobe.