Meet the New Shoes: Socks
Shoes that look like socks in big 2025? Hard to believe, but true. The gigantic hula hoop that is our fashion trend cycle has come all the way back around, and now brands big and small are whipping up some seriously slim sock shoes. Again.
At the peak of the 2010s, sock shoes were an inescapable facet of the fashion zeitgeist. Upon its release in 2016, Balenciaga's Speed Trainer immediately had the streets on lock. I couldn't complete a full scroll on Instagram without seeing a pair of those foot-hugging sneakers, an early signature of now-departed creative director Demna.
To think, 10 years later, he'd be at Gucci, sock shoes would be on their second go-round, and America has the same president. Crazy stuff.
The Balenciaga Speed Trainer and likeminded bodycon-style shoes started to fall off around 2019. Though they stuck around in various uncool capacities, the sock sneaker soon became a dated fashion relic alongside velvet chokers and over-the-knee boots. But after years of chunkier-than-chunky sneakers and flat-but-not-sock-flat sneakers, the sock shoe is ready to reclaim its title.
Like most trend revivals, today’s sock shoe doesn't look exactly like it did the first go-round. Where the sock shoes of the past retained a clear sneaker feel, this new class is much more sock than shoe.
You can’t blame Balenciaga this time. Bottega Veneta almost accidentally kicked things off in 2023 with sock boots that look like knitted booties but true to Bottega Veneta's leather mastery, are actually made of thin strips of leather.
Things percolated for a minute and then, this year, Issey Miyake took a similarly cozy approach with its Spring/Summer 2025 sock shoes. And for Fall/Winter 2025, The Row sent out literally shoeless models. Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren alumna Sarah Fiszel's brand, Brave Pudding, created a completely cashmere sock shoe that became a bonafide momfluencer hit the prior winter.
Actually, maybe you can point to Balenciaga a little bit, considering that the house once responsible for the world’s fattest shoes is now going basically barefoot (and the toe shoe thing? Don’t even start).
The most interesting take on the sock trend revival, though, comes by way of Diesel's laceless stretch denim sock shoe. It’s a fittingly bizarre take on the trend, seeing as how denim was at the crux of Diesel's own revival a few years back. Well, that and Glenn Martens, of course.
Really, this entire sock-as-shoe phenomenon really does feel like something Martens would’ve dreamed up first.
That he’s joining the footie fray at all, though, shows just how weird these things really are. In fact, they’ve only gotten weirder.
