18 Best Sock Brands （ Design & Fabrics，Development）
Now socks are more than a plain fabric hide inside the shoes with a low sense of existence but have become a high-profile fashion item. To survive in the stock market and to cater more and more customers’ demand for personality and high-quality socks, businessmen in the sock field begin to put the socks into all kinds of fashion designs.
Today, I’d like to share with you how the 18 world’s most famous sock brands have made their socks worldwide popular, and what are the most compelling features of these brands. So, you can get some inspiration for your sock business if you are a businessman. If you just want to buy a pair of socks, you can also click the brands of socks to go to the store to purchase. So I will start my share in the following sequence:
Brands of Regular Socks
1. Happy Socks
Development：Happy Socks is founded in 2008 in Sweden. The brand was built out of the whim of Mikel Soderlindh and Viktor Tell, they found that most of the colorful and printed sock on the market are just for mischiefs.
Obviously, this kind of sock can not meet the need of those customers who really want some colorful and fashion socks design. So they started Happy Sock, and since then, their socks have been sold in 90 countries around the world. Their idea for socks is simple- Sock is a way of expressing attitudes.
Features：We can feel its lively, colorful and joyful personality from its name. The happy sock is dedicated to the unrestrained imagination and integrate happiness and art into every corner of life. Its founder expects to bring a happy and cheerful mood for everybody with gorgeous colors and designs.
Paying attention to appearance does not mean ignoring quality. All materials of Happy Socks are made of combed cotton and other high-quality fabrics. The top and the heel of the socks are processed through special craft which makes them not to worn out easily. Although the brand is new, its contracted factory has more than 30 years of socks history, so the quality is also guaranteed.
2. Corgi
Development: Corgi was founded by Carmarthenshire draper Rhys Jones, who purchased some second-hand knitting machines and began to produce thigh-high woolen stockings for the local colliers in 1892. He then began to produce a range of socks of better quality, ideal for men to wear to the chapel on Sundays.
Rhys paid very close attention to detail and quality and as the reputation of his products grew, demand spread across the whole of South Wales. In 1989, Corgi was awarded a Royal Warrant by Prince Wales and continued to supply him and other members of the Royal family with socks and other knitted goods.
In 2008 Corgi Join forces with its sister company to expand its export market and the company’s products are now sold all over the world. Despite its dramatic growth, Corgi maintains the uncompromising commitment to quality that has always been at the heart of the brand.
Features: Corgi socks are 100% made in the UK and specializing in producing top-quality socks with hand-sewed toe seams are completely flat, ensuring maximum comfort of every pair.
The pattern and the colorways of Corgi socks are also very eye-catching, Corgi’s bright striped socks are very popular in Europe, especially in Britain.
It might for the cold weather and the need for the warm socks in Wales, Corgi made the best pure cashmere socks in the world. Each pair is made individually on an age-old knitting machine using techniques and processes handed down through the generations.
3. Pantherella
Development: Pantherella is the UK’s top socks brand, typical British manufacturing. It opened its doors in 1937 and began trading as Midlands Hosiery Mills, an established women’s hosiery factory.
In 1945 the founder Louis Goldschmidt get tired of the rough workmanship and the stuffy design of men’s socks, he thought rich colors, diversiform design, the close stitch is the highest standard for a good sock, thus he began bold innovation then.
His innovation sock was widespread and accepted, and Louis’s brand defined the industry standard. In 1945, when “Pantherella”, the now world-famous name, was officially launched, the socks of this brand had already been exported to other countries in Europe, even North America, as far as Australia.
Features: The top cotton Pantherella socks are made of Sea Island Cotton (the best long-staple cotton), and the top Wool socks are made of Merino Wool( the best wool in the world). I have to mention that the Sea Island Cotton has cashmere texture, silk-like luster, and its wrinkle resistance, anti-pilling performance is better than other cotton fabrics.
Except for applying superior materials, Pantherella also pays close attention to the workmanship level of socks. Before leaving the factory, the Pantherella socks should go through the Hand Linked Toe process, which is the most important feature of the brand. Its signature Hand Linked Toe method provides excellent comfort, some people acclaim that wearing Pantherella socks is as dignified as flying in a private jet.
4. STANCE
Development: STANCE, is a Londoner affiliated fashion brand established in California in 2010. Depend on their original design, and technology innovation of fabrics, the STANCE has been sold more than 40 countries around the world and brought these distinctive products to more young men.
Features: STANCE just had noticed that socks are a humble niche accessories that always been neglected by people. They decided to give it a new life, so the STANCE lit the life art and unique behavior of self-expression, which attracted celebrities from many fields like athletics stars to join their “family which we call Punk&Poets.
Stance’s products can easily go with all kinds of styles, as you can find low-key, hip-hop, playful, tattoo and other elements in stance’s products.
In addition to the signature fancy products, STANCE has also launched a series of low-key and calm business style socks, the design of STANCE adds more fashion flavor in the serious workplace.
Besides good design, STANCE is also perfect in material and function. The application of combed cotton material, the unique patented elastic arch support design on the sole of the foot, as well as the self-adjusting calf design, all of the scientific and technological make the socks of STANCE comfortable and durable.
5. Gallo
Development: Gallo is an Italian sock brand founded in 1927. In the 1960s, Gallo came up with the first socks for newborns–Gallo makes the smallest socks in the world. It was in 1998 that a real Gallo revolution began, they try to turn the purchase of socks for necessity into impulse buying.
So, the sock of grey turns into a sock of different colors. From then on, Gallo socks and accessories came in an explosion of multicolor stripes in variable proportions, the bold play of contrasts, unique style, and high recognizability. Stripe after stripe, the new socks look was defined.
Features: In terms of materials, Gallo’s socks are made of fine fibers like cashmere and merino cashmere, which make them quite comfortable to wear. Gallo’s socks can remain soft and new even after being washed many times.
For more than 70 years, Gallo has represented the perfect balance between hosiery craftsmanship and rigorous production and has always paid attention to follow customer preferences and fashion trends. You browse the website of Gallo, you will find that Gallo is famous for colorful striped socks with bright colors.
6. Strathcona stockings
Development: Strathcona Stockings is a brand created by Canadian artist Ryley O ‘Byrne in 2010. Although started late, it does take creating new designs seriously. It prints any funny patterns and all kinds of birds and flowers on the socks.
Features: The biggest selling point of Strathcona Stockings is that the patterns on the socks are drawn by hand. In order to ensure the high quality of the socks, the socks of this brand are produced in limited collections, so the price is high, about 36 dollars per pair.
The official website of Strathcona Stockings is also very interesting. There are not only various pictures of beautiful socks, but also funny images on their website. Strathcona Stockings not only displays the quality and technology of socks but also cares about the connotation and fun of the brand.
7. K.BELL
Development: K. Bell Socks was founded in 1979 by Karen Bell as a small business in Los Angeles, California. Karen is a creative entrepreneur who used her fashion sense and determination to create fun, fashionable socks. Now K. Bell Socks has a global reputation for great designs and quality products, currently selling worldwide.
Features: The most impressive is the unrestrained and interesting patterns of all kinds on the socks. K. Bell Socks holds that fun is always in fashion. Their team creates the most fun and trendy socks to follow their principle. Now they have the licenses for Shag, Grumpy Cat, Laurel Burch, and The Girls socks add colorful fun to K.Bell product mix.
8. Richer Poorer
Development: the Richer Poorer，founded in 2010，is a famous socks brand in California. The founder Tim and Iva started their business without any experience. They decided to take the risk and to focus on creating a trendy design of the socks. Fortunately, a few years later, Richer Poorer has become a promising brand.
Features: The Richer Poorer socks have good elasticity and good perspiration permeability. And the design is famous for the unique holiday style, which makes Richer Poorer popular among young people.
As the founder follows the idea that people no matter rich or poor, everyone deserves to live a happy life! Richer Poorer slowly expanded to different markets, like a fashion sock market and extreme sports sock market. So it is widely accepted by consumers of different styles and needs.
Brands of Pantyhoses
1. Wolford
Development: Wolford was established in 1949 in a small town called Bregenz, which is a town full of pastoral rustic scenery, quiet and elegant. Wolford absorbed the inspiration of nature, and design beauty and attractiveness for women’s pantyhoses.
Wolford started its own production line in 1997 and kept increasing trade partners. They spend a lot of money to design and print beautiful brochures, hire mature women as models, and invite photographers Helmut Newton and Howard Schatz who are known for their avant-garde to be their Cameraman. Their collaboration is a masterstroke of Wolford’s classic design.
Features: Wolford hosiery is characterized by its perfect workmanship and comfort. The tenet for Wolford in recent years has been “to be seamless”. The stockings are produced without seams or joints. Its seamless weaving process enables the hosiery and underwear to have a perfect close-fitting effect. Meanwhile, the exclusive fabric technology makes the hosiery as soft as the second layer of skin, bringing incomparable wonderful wearing experience to customers.
For nearly 60 years, Wolford has been the world’s top hosiery brand. It is probably the best and most expensive pantyhoses in the world. It wins the heart of many Hollywood stars like Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lopez, Victoria Beckham.
2. Levante
Development: Levante is the world’s top-level pantyhoses with about 50 years of history. Levante was established in 1969 in Castel Goffredo- beautiful scenery in Milan. The founder Paolo Pacchioni opened the earliest family-owned professional manufacturers of pantyhoses in Europe.
Features: Not to mention, Levante is the first to propose to take pantyhoses as a fashion dressing concept about 20 years ago. It applies bold original colors like green, purple, metal, not limited to the original single black, gray, flesh color. And Levantes love to use ornate patterns, even wire, and dazzling water diamonds to decorate the socks.
Levante follows the Italian aesthetic of socks, they hold the principle that “Stockings that show skin are good socks”! Even the stockings for winter should be burnished to give maximum beauty to the body.
3. Falke
Development: Falke is the largest and oldest sock manufacturer in Europe, founded in 1895 by Franz FalkeRohen. It started to set foot in ladies’ stockings in 1959, and it is now one of the four world’s top stockings brands.
Now nearly 110 years old, the company’s leadership has been the fourth generation of the family. Today, Falke has become a leading luxury brand and the largest manufacturer of socks in Europe with more than 3,000 employees worldwide and annual sales of 185,000,000 euros.
Features: All the Falke socks are produced in Germany and all are of high texture. One of the Falke nylon stockings once has widely spread all over Europe, and the princess Kate has worn them on several occasions. This stocking is still competitive on the market.
The average price of Falke pantyhoses is the most affordable among luxury brands. The basic entry style is around $ 23, and the high-end style is basically no more than $50. Compared with the same grade brand WOLFORD, Falke can be a good luxury item for beginners.
4. Gerbe
Development: Stéphane Gerbe started his company with 100 workers in 1904. In 1936，Gerbe launched pantyhoses called Bas Carnation, which is woven by a straightening machine with a back seam on it. The stocking with a back seam is a symbol of handwork postwar French elegance.
In 1951, Gerbe signed a stocking production corporation contract with Christian Dior for 50 years. Gerbe is now taking advantage of new opportunities for international development, particularly in the Asian market.
Features: In nearly 100 years of professional hosiery manufacturing history, she always obliges to the principle – “use the most expensive raw materials and the most luxurious and complex crafts to design the pantyhoses to achieve the highest quality”.
Every Gerbe stockings are produced under extremely strict control in France and they insist on sewing the stocking opening by hand. Therefore Gerbe becomes the symbol of luxury and noble.
Gerbe also provides exclusive customizing services to meet customers’ demanding personalized requirements. They can customize the size, texture, and color of pantyhoses according to customers’ wishes.
5. Fogal
Development: Fogal was established in 1921 in Switzerland. In 2013, Fogal designs the legwear in cooperation with Catherine Martin for the remake of the Hollywood film production “The Great Gatsby” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Cary Mulligan and Oscar goes to Catherine Martin for the best costume design in “The Great Gatsby”. Since then, Fogal started cooperation with stars.
Features: Fogal has become the royal brand, representing the luxurious quality. The late Princess Diana was a long-time Fogal customer. Fogal is also famous and is highly acclaimed for the 82 different colors for a variety of pantyhose. Fogal is exactly the source of all the socks in distinct colors you can see in fashion magazines.
6. Charons
Development: Charnoswas founded in 1936 in the United Kingdom by Charles Noskwith. After years of development, Charnos is today recognized as the leading manufacturer of pantyhoses in the UK. Charnos’ factory churns out more than 1 million pairs of high-quality stockings every week and sells them around the world.
Features: Charnos combines unique design with unique British elegance, and it continues to innovate boldly and improve its quality, earning itself an important place in the European underwear and sock industry.
Unlike luxury brands like Wolfword, Charnos is more about spreading a culture than trying to follow a trend. It brings traditional British elegance. Most of Charnos’ products also embody this British style well.
7. Pretty Polly
Development: Pretty Polly is a classic well-known British pantyhoses brand. It was founded in the 1930s and started making high-quality stockings with pure pantyhoses. In 1939, it had sold more than 48 million pairs a year, it has become the must-have item for almost every British woman.
Since 1919, Pretty Polly has been working hard for years to combine the latest technology with classic hosiery designs. Pretty Polly’s design principle has been “using modern technology to create classic beauty”. It’s worth to mention that Pretty Polly is also the inventor of latex non-slip hold-up stockings, which is the most popular stocking worldwide.
Features: Pretty Polly has become a synonym for famous and pretty girls. Its Dutch House series was a hit among the female stars. Such as Jessie J, Agyness Deyn, and Fearne Cotton are among its ardent fans.
Today, Pretty Polly has become the most popular hosiery brand in the UK. It has a wide range of products, with the greatest variety of product segmentation for different occasions, you can find the suitable hosiery for any occasion from Pretty Polly.
8. Atsugi
Development: Atsugi is one of the world’s earliest enterprises engaged in the production of pantyhoses, founded in 1947 in Japan. In 1947, Japan was in ruins after the war, and Mr. Borosuke had a hunch that this gloomy era was coming to an end, and women would soon be free to dress up brightly. So he dreamed of “contributing to the beauty and comfort for all women”.
Following this dream until today, Atsugi has become the most famous and largest pantyhose brand in Japan, which can be called the “Japanese national socks” and exported to all over the world.
Features: The biggest feature of the Atsugi is that it has eight series of socks- nearly 1,000 varieties, and there are about 200 varieties updated every year. Among these products, there are ultra-thin thermal infrared heating socks, ultra-thin UV-proof socks, and silk protein whitening socks, etc. In short, you can find Atsugi different functional sock to meet different needs.
Brands of Children’s Socks
1. Jefferies Socks
Development: Jefferies Socks was established in Burlington, North Carolina in 1937, producing hosiery products for men and women. In 1962, Jefferies expanded its product line to include the children’s market. Since that time their children’s market share has grown considerably and children’s sock products turn into their main business.
Features: Jefferies socks provide a wide variety of socks so you can find socks for children of different ages, different gender, as well as socks with different features. There are non-slip socks, seamless socks, organic cotton socks, sports socks, etc. In a word, you can easily find the right socks for your baby in Jefferies Socks.
2. Carter’s
Development: Carter’s is a well-established company of America with a history dating back to 1865. In the 1870s and 1880s, Cater’s was a manufacturer of adult underwear and have sold more than 25,000 underwear items suitable for all family members.
From the 1920s to the 1940s, Carter’s invented many special designs for baby clothes. By the 1950s, Carter’s had shifted its focus to infant clothing. It is now the largest branded marketer of baby and children’s clothing in the U.S.
Features: Carter’s designed Nevabind’s cuffs and Handicuff gloves to prevent the baby from scratching themselves, and Jiffon necklines to help mothers dress their babies easily. Gift serious is also a big part of Carter’s business like socks gifts serious.
Carter’s uses colorful labels on packaging to create a relaxed shopping experience for mothers. Carter’s label shows the product design concepts. Cater‘s sell their products at relatively low prices when the quality does win the customers’ thumb.
The End
I hope this post can give you some inspiration for your sock business and improve your sock aesthetic ability. If you intend to manufacture sock from China, please contact us or leave a comment for more details, we can offer the most competitive price and most trendy designs for you.
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Thank you for sharing this amazing information. With thanks!
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Thank you for the info! Great Stuff here!!
-Chi City :-)
Thank you for the info! Awesome Stuff here!!
-Chi City :-)
This is a wonderful post, I knew some brands in the post.
Awesome post！ Those are most famous sock brands indeed, Thanks for organize the content
I didn’t know so many world famous sock brands before. Really appreciate your articles.
Thanks for your comment, Aro. It is our honor to help you.