This year’s Fashion & Beauty issue is about finding beauty in unexpected places. That applies not only to the Cosmo Factory Cosmetology Academy on Front Street, where we staged our shoot for this issue, but to this edition’s primary focus: feet.
In addition to the fine spring fashions featured here from a number of local boutiques, we wanted to focus on socks, something most of us wear, but don’t always think about. Until, at least, we see designs like the ones from Santa Cruz’s own Sockshop and Shoe Company.
See, the Sockshop folks have been thinking about the fashion of socks for two decades. In 2007, owners Eric and Ellen Gil also began designing their own socks, and now roughly 15 percent of what’s sold in the store comes from their own line, Socksmith.
They’ve also expanded their brand with stores in San Francisco, on Haight Street—which they are currently in the process of re-locating to a building four times the size—and in Berkeley.
Eric and Ellen view their socks as functional pieces of art, which makes Santa Cruz the perfect place for them. But Socksmith socks can now be found all over the world in specialty clothing shops; there’s even a store in New Zealand that carries them. New lines come out seasonally, with Spring’s on the way.
Locals have long known that Sockshop has an endless variety of ways to cover your feet. If you’re not in the mood for a pair of socks with cats wearing glasses (although, seriously, how could you not be?), Sockshop carries a wide range of designs to choose from. We’ve featured several of those socks in these pages, and we want to send out a special thank you to them, along with Bunny’s Shoes, Legs, Pacific Trading Co., Synergy.html and Tomboy.
Thanks also to our photographer Chip Scheuer, our models, the stylists from the Cosmo Factory, and everyone else who helped rock this shoot down to its toes.
See the Fashion and Beauty 2013 photos here.
