Socks

People get into some pretty weird stuff these days, like not washing their clothes. As with many trends, I thought the idea of being dirty was stupid when I first heard about it, but am now beginning to accept it in my own way. The most popular form of this fad is something called “raw denim.” Raw denim is Latin for “unwashed jeans.” If you buy raw denim, you’re not allowed to wash it, and you’re supposed to wear the same jeans every single day for at least a month to wear them in. The greatest advantage of wearing raw denim is that other raw denim wearers will respect you for being like them.

Since I already have a few pairs of jeans, I’m not ready to spend some serious cash on raw denim. Instead, I’ve started small and have been wearing the same pair of socks for 25 straight weeks. Following the raw method, I have never washed them or removed them from my feet, even in the shower. I took a couple of pictures tonight so you can see what they’re looking like on their six month anniversary:

You may have noticed that they don’t match. This is how you know they’re authentic.

I can’t remember which brand of socks they are, but it doesn’t matter because it’s a really obscure brand that you’ve probably never heard of.

The cool thing about wearing raw socks is that you’re wearing a visual and aromatic history of where your feet have taken you. Each stain tells a story. The stain you can see above on the fourth and fifth toe, a combination of buttered popcorn and cola, tells the story of the time I was kicked out of a movie theater for an “offensive odor.”

I can’t wait to see what they look like after I’ve been wearing them for a full year!