Forget skinny jeans, Gen Z are now coming for our socks

First they came for our skinny jeans and side parts, and we adjusted. Then they came for our eyeshadow, and we had an existential crisis over how much time we’d wasted in 2016 learning how to do the perfect cut crease. And now they’re coming for our socks. Is nothing safe?

Ankle socks are the latest fashion item Millennials are making the mistake of wearing, according to Gen Z. TikToks and Instagram Reels have been popping from outraged Millennials and exasperated Zoomers weighing in on the distinctive generational foot gap. Apparently, no matter how good your skin is, ankle socks are a dead giveaway you’re over 30.

Kendall Jenner (from left), Olivia Rodrigo and Hailey Bieber are all fans of the crew sock.Credit: Getty

Yes, ankle socks are out, and don’t even think about sockettes. So, what’s in? Crew socks, coloured socks, textured socks – any socks that are easy to see.

To some people, this might not seem like a big deal – they’re just socks, after all – but to Millennials, this is the latest in a long line of changing trends that have shaken us to our core. And this one is unsettling us perhaps more than any other. After all, we’re trauma bonded to our ankle socks.

I don’t think Gen Zs who so easily dismiss our exposed ankles can ever truly understand the (lack of) lengths we’ve already gone to once in our lifetimes to get socks right. The pain we endured if we ever got it wrong.

In the 2000s, crew socks were only ever worn by your parents or PE teacher. If you had so much as a millimetre of sock peeping out over your shoe, you were relentlessly and viciously ridiculed.

In high school, we’d do anything to avoid that fate. We wore ankle socks that slipped into our shoes, and sockettes that were functionally useless. We’d fold our longer socks down over our feet and spend the day walking around on a weird and uncomfortable double sock layer. In drastic circumstances, we’d let our feet go totally commando and wind up stinkier than the change-rooms after sport. Somehow, even that that was preferable to a hint of sock-on-leg.

And yet, while we’ve been walking around in ignorant bliss, our wrong socks have been unknowingly telegraphing our age. Such a revelation hurts, not only because we love our ankle socks, but because it forces us to face a dark truth we don’t want to look at: that we are out of touch.

Are ankle socks the new skinny jeans? According to Gen Z, yes.Credit: iStock

It’s a hard lesson for any generation, I imagine, but for Millennials it’s particularly brutal considering for so long we were defined by our youth.

There was a time you couldn’t go a week without a headline declaring how upstart Millennials were ruining something Boomers held dear. In fact, it was only recently the word “Millennial” stopped being synonymous with youth.

Perhaps the transition was tricky for other generations, but there is a special form of anguish in our brutally swift shift from “young” to “old” playing out on social media – the garbage kingdom we built – surrounded by the very people who are not only replacing us, but who never hesitate to mercilessly remind us of that fact.

As someone who has always loved a bright, patterned, colourful sock, you’d think I’d welcome this new sock age with open arms and covered ankles – and once I got over the initial shock, I sort of did.

When I stepped out of the house recently with my mum leggings dutifully tucked into my candy pink crew socks (how I’d always worn them at home, but never in public) it felt somewhat freeing. A thrill ran through me at the idea that if a Gen Z spared me a glance, they’d clearly see I was not some out-of-touch Millennial.

Unless, of course, they’d also been following the online sock discourse, and would know that I had only updated my sock habits out of sheer desperation to be seen as cool by them. And, as any self-respecting 2000s survivor knows, desperation and coolness cannot co-exist – the former automatically cancels out the latter.

And that’s perhaps what burns the most: if Millennials and older generations were really cool, we wouldn’t care. We’d walk around with our ankles out and proud, calm in the knowledge that the opinions of others don’t matter, let alone those from a generation who brought back low-rise pants and dresses over jeans.

And so my head tells me to let go – to embrace my age, my own tastes, and what looks best on my body, no matter what the current fashion trend is.

Which is exactly why I sit here, in my cropped pants, wearing mid-calf pastel rainbow ombre socks for the whole world to see. Ahem.

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