It’s no longer a secret, cycling is booming. And to signal one’s belonging to this social group, it’s important to follow fashion and trends. More than a question of conformity, distinction, or originality, it’s also quite often about following the movement and doing like one’s peers… So, socks? How high should they be?

By Jean-François Tatard – Photos: Jeff Tatard, Wikimedia Commons, All rights reserved

What is the principle of fashion? Isn’t fashion something that goes out of fashion? And which, moreover, also comes back into fashion? You’ll admit, socks have been worn (more) high for about fifteen years. Yet, it’s not that new. Mid-calf socks are a phenomenon that has already existed… How high were Gino Bartali’s or Fausto Coppi’s socks? So, if Bradley Wiggins, one of the founding fathers of the trend in the 2010s, brought the concept back into fashion and even pushed the phenomenon beyond mid-calf, this conception of socks confronts two camps: fans of high socks and the “anti” who don’t conceive them higher than ankle height.

An offer for all tastes

The phenomenon is ambiguous enough that when you order your pair of socks online today, websites offer them in two heights: high or low. With one rule to respect, however: the one that says you don’t cross over into soccer socks. This Code of Honor is well known to all wearers of mid-calf socks. So if you take advantage of spring to refresh your fashionable cyclist’s wardrobe and decide to go for higher socks, remember: you don’t do just anything with socks, you don’t cover the calf muscle, you stop just below it. It’s a matter of style.

You don’t do just anything with socks, you don’t cover the calf muscle, you stop just below it. It’s a matter of style.

Well, in the realm of fashions that go out of fashion and come back into fashion, there are also sock colors. While white socks have almost always been part of the dogma and normally, you never make a style mistake by choosing this color (like black socks, by the way, but beware: always with white shoes, otherwise you automatically exclude yourself from the Style Brigade!), it seems there are still some holdouts who persist with colors from elsewhere. Perhaps the same ones who dare to mismatch left and right. Moreover, the Rapha brand has managed to respond to this strange need.

And since we’re talking about propriety, also be careful about disappointments. Indeed, not everyone can wear high socks. Some are immediately exempt. If you have calves like a potato picker or your profile looks more like Chip and Dale, sorry for the discrimination, but it’s like absolutely wanting to wear skinny jeans when you weigh 113 kg for 1.60 m… The rule is also to have a long and rather elongated calf to hope to wear high socks!

The UCI regulates

Too bad for the ridiculous tan lines, which are getting smaller and smaller between the increasingly high socks and the increasingly low bib shorts, but the argument retained in the rider’s stylistic charter states that the sock size should actually be “neither too long nor too low.” Moreover, a UCI regulation exists and it is clear for socks: their length must not exceed half the height between the “middle of the malleolus and the middle of the fibula head.” To put it simply, the middle of the ankle and the bottom of the knee, i.e., mid-calf. However, you will always be free to wear shorter socks, or even much shorter ones, even if at 3bikes, we must admit, we’re not big fans…

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