A Casual Obsession: Inside the British Sock Fetish Council
Conducting a literature review for my recent paper A Casual Obsession: Inside the British Sock Fetish Council for the journal Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion it came as no surprise to me that so little has been written about men's socks. If menswear has historically been overshadowed by womenswear in dress research, men's socks are equally overshadowed by the vast amount of research into men's underwear.
However, as I began to broaden my reading to first-hand accounts written by casuals members of hooligan firms and published from the 1980s onwards (what Steve Redhead referred to as hit-and-tell memoirs), it became clear that socks had played an oncoming role in the dress activity of these subcultural pariahs.
Individual authors repeatedly stressed the significance of their dress to their activities, and particularly their socks. These accounts mentioned electric-green socks, Burlington socks, leg warmers, white terry-towelling socks, and socks filled with pool balls to fashion make-shift weapons.
The founding of the British Sock Fetish Council in 2011, made this seditious activity far more visible, with images posted by hundreds of men on Twitter and, later, Instagram. Search #socksoutsaturday to see some examples. In doing so, it exposed this hidden dress activity to a broader audience and allowed for a far more complex and nuanced understanding of how casuals use dress than was previously portrayed by academics and the media, which only focused on violence and hooliganism.
Indeed, the members' other activities, such as the creation of graphics, imagery, stickers, and, finally, their own socks, demonstrate how these various elements of cultural creation interact to create a sense of individual and shared group identity. In doing so, it illustrates that sometimes the simplest garments can convey the most complex and powerful meanings.
Abstract:
(Full article available at Ingenta Connect or through Institutional library services)
‘This article interrogates the positioning of socks as a culturally transgressive garment by football casuals through a case study of the British Sock Fetish Council (BSFC). While most studies contextualize casuals within a discourse of hooliganism and violence, their use of dress as a means of negotiating shared masculine identities remains under-researched. Founded in 2011, the BSFC quickly grew to over 1000 card-carrying members, holding meets at Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham, and London, as well as at football matches throughout the United Kingdom. Within the BSFC, the term ‘fetish’ is not used to denote a sexual predilection by an almost entirely heterosexual community. Instead, it acknowledges the members’ obsession with clothing and highlights the sub-textual tensions inherent in their individual and collective practices. The author was an active participant within the BSFC, witnessing first-hand the community’s development through the online dissemination of highly constructed, self-generated imagery, featuring colourful, patterned socks juxtaposed with rare trainers. This article explores the self-reflexive use of social media to construct group practices and provides insights into how socks were instrumental in establishing consensus on inclusive and hybrid masculine identities within this community.’
Citation:
Groves, A. (2022). A casual obsession: Inside the British Sock Fetish Council. Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion, 9(2), 187–206. https://doi.org/10.1386/csmf_00059_1
