Four years ago, as regular readers may recall (or, more likely, have chosen to forget), I brought you the news that Jamaican reggae singer Vybz Kartel had released a song called Clarks.
It was essentially a hymn to the shoes, which have something like cult status in Kartel's homeland. As he explained in the lyrics: "Mi nuh wear nautica (no!)/ Dat a fi sailor/ Polo fi tiger, I'm a di golfer/ Di new Wallabee hotter than sulfur."
Because I still tune in occasionally to those radio stations and programmes which play modern Jamaican reggae I've recently been introduced to another sartorially-themed song (or "old-school digital dancehall deejay throwback" as online magazine United Reggae calls it). This one is by a singer called Iba Mahr and, while it gives Clarks Wallabees a mention, it goes on to namecheck a whole wardrobe of other items as well. Mahr mentions something called "a mesh marina", for instance, which I think is essentially a coloured string vest, though more of the NBA All-Star variety than the Rab C Nesbitt All-Stomach sort.
But prime among the garments listed - and the ones which gives the song its title - are another British staple: diamond-patterned socks. These too are "hotter than sulfur" down Kingston way, it seems, as Iba Mahr's Diamond Sox [sic] demonstrates.
Nor is he alone in singing the praises of the Argyle sock. Fellow Jamaican musician Bounty Killer has a line about diamond socks in one of his songs, though refreshingly he teams his with a pair of Lone Fox high-tops. And last year one Shay Butler released a novelty single called The Socks Song. "I got my socks on/ I got my socks on/ I got my Ar-gyle socks on," goes the chorus. Put "Argyle Socks Song" into YouTube and you'll even find a video in which two female American college students dance around their flat wearing knee-length "diamond" socks in a routine soundtracked by Butler's song.
Still in America, the appeal of the Argyle sock has also found its way into Major League Soccer where Sporting Kansas City used an Argyle pattern on their third strip in the 2013/14 season. It must have been a gift to opposing fans - "Darned in the morning! You're getting darned in the morning!" - though confusingly the sock pattern was on the shirts and the socks themselves were plain black.
None of this should surprise anyone who spent the 1980s with their jeans rolled up and a pair of DMs on their feet because the chances are the space between those two things - commonly known as the ankle area - was clad in a pair of jazzy Argyle socks, probably ones made by Burlington. In some quarters, the Argyle sock is still regarded as a Mod classic and I'll wager there isn't a well-dressed sock drawer in the country that doesn't have at least one pair attracting moths. So if you've got some, why not get them out this week? Go on, unleash your inner Rasta.
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