Sartorial Concessions to the South: The Christmas Socks

I never saw a little girl in a bishop dress until I moved here.

They’re just not worn in the North. No one puts their boys in John-Johns, either. I was unaware that those were even manufactured after 1963.

Upstate New York, where I’m from, is too steeped in its ethnic and working-class roots for that sort of frippery (albeit adorable frippery). The children’s aesthetic there is far more utilitarian. For “dressy” occasions (holidays, school pictures, church twice a year), all the kids are dressed like they go to Catholic school (khakis, button-downs; jumpers for girls), whether or not they do. Otherwise it’s jeans and sneakers. Gap Kids is as fancy as it gets.

After I moved, I thought about hiding my clothes so my mother didn’t donate my mostly black wardrobe to some color-blind homeless woman. I had to get used to all the color that surrounded me, even before stepping into a children’s boutique. I was surprised a city of this size had so many, but now I see it’s par for the course here in the South.

Boring, practical ol’ me just could not see the sense of buying bishops for my 9-month-old daughter. I was certainly no expert, but don’t they crawl before they walk? Who can crawl in a dress? And apparently the boutiques don’t let you leave with the clothes – they have to be sent out to be monogrammed first.

I understood why “precious” is the most-used adjective describing children down here. They were precious because they were dressed precious. (Or were they dressed precious because they were precious? Who can say?)

(Seriously, I love my new home and I don’t mean to make fun. But I gotta tell you non-Southerners this: You can even find bishops with Clemson tiger paws and South Carolina gamecocks on them. I shit you not.)

I knew that by eschewing the prevailing style I’d be dressing my child like an outsider, but I was willing to take that stand in the name of frugality. We hoped (and still do) to add another daughter to the family, so embroidery was out. Unless I put Tink’s last initial on everything, but I didn’t want to have to spend all my time correcting people who called her Laverne.

Instead I chose hardy knits that allowed her to jump and run. And now I’ve got a girl whose dolls collect dust but who can identify such superheroes as Mighty Thor, Punisher and Juggernaut. Precious indeed.

I’m not immune to the pressure – real or imagined – to dress my daughter a little more girly. She’s got a bishop or two in her closet, and she looks like an angel in them, with their fluttery little sleeve caps. The bishops aren’t the problem. It’s the pair of Christmas socks I bought that make me want to hang my edgy Yankee head in shame.

I picked them up at one of the aforementioned children’s boutiques in town, this one on the tony Augusta Road, in the Old Money section of town. Not one of the children’s shops near my house, on the East side, where the New Money types and Newcomers From the Northeast reside. Anyway, I purchased something for Tink and at the counter I saw the socks– white cotton socks with Ho! Ho! embroidered in red. They weren’t “me,” but they would match the (plain, non-floral, solid-color, no-rickrack-ruffles-or-ribbons) dress I bought Tink for her first Christmas as a captialist.

Something seemed funny about the total, but rather than say anything, I handed over my debit card. But once I got in the car, I rifled the bag for the receipt only to find that the socks I thought were $2.50 were actually $12.50.

I sat in my car like a dope for several minutes. … Do I take them back in like any normal person would and say, “Had I known, I would never pay $12.50 for a pair of socks for an 18-month-old”? Or were they just so precious and would look so great with her outfit that they were worth the splurge? Rather than risk being the first person to return something in this store’s history because something was too expensive, I of course took them home.

And they were, the most goddamn precious socks ever to cover a child’s feet. It didn’t hurt that she wore them with a pair of red Chinese slippers, the whole effect a symbolic marriage of East and West; a secular greeting rooted in the two-millennia-old celebration of the Messiah paired with dragons representing a dynasty from the oldest continuous civilization on Earth; yin and yang. All there on her fat, wide feet.

Have I told you how wide this kid’s feet are? Still, at 4 years old, her feet are almost as wide as they are long. Her toes are so naturally splayed she will never need those toe separators when she gets pedicures. And yet! The Christmas socks still fit!

This will be the fourth year for the Christmas socks. They were featured in last year’s Christmas card photo. I like them with jeans. I think it’s even more ironic to pair them with her rugged Keens. Precious, maybe. But never prissy.

On the next edition of “Sartorial Concessions to the South”: The Time I Walked into a Lilly Pulitzer Store and Burnt My Retinas.

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Tagged as: kids' fashion, Southern stuff