What’s with the socks and sandals?

At first, socks and sandals had nothing to do with style.  Most people had only one pair of sandals for work and one or two pairs of shoes for church.  But in Mexico it gets cold in the evening during the winter months so we put socks on to keep our feet warm.

We used to always wear pantyhose until some brave women wore white socks with black sandals on a Sunday afternoon.  Soon all the girls were doing it.  All of the sudden, it was so popular that some girls had bows, lace and glow in the dark bright colors and before anyone knew what happened it was the hottest new trend.

We were not allowed to shave our legs back then.  We would put on the light skin coloured pantyhose and put the short socks over them so it looked like we had nicely smooth shaved legs.  This was okay for a while and then the elders were worried that change was happening and that was not okay and they had to put a stop to it.

Parents were told not to let their daughters wear them and so we stopped wearing them during the day time.  We kept wearing them at night.  During the day it was back to dark brown pantyhose or knee length socks. 

The lighter the colour was, the more complaints we would get.  The preacher began speaking in church about how important it was not to change the way we dressed, including the way we dress our feet.

How you dress your feet during the week was not as big of a deal as on Sundays.  During the week people mostly work at home and on their farms where no one would really see you.  Sunday was when you were expected to dress appropriately and represent our people/culture.

When LG Mennonites come to Canada, they find no one cares anymore about sock colours.  And so the women go nuts with their socks and sandals, because it is cold after all and now they are allowed to wear them.

In Mexico it’s not as important as it used to be, even though the times have slightly changed.  Women usually still wear pantyhose on Sundays.

These days I see a lot of women in Hollywood wearing socks and sandals, like in the picture to the right.  Nowadays I follow the North American style, which is not quite the same as the Mexican style, pictured below.