Girl Students Busilv Knit Monogramed Socks: New U.S. Collegemen's Fad

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 30, 16 March 1948, Page 8

Girl Students Busilv Knit Monogramed Socks: New U.S. Collegemen's Fad

This summer the home-from-school American co-ed is up to her eyebrows in the age old art of handknitting. With a staggering amount of size eleven and size twelve wool socks to knit and monogram by autumn, she will spend her "loafing hours" manipulating the needles, states a report from. New York received by the New Zealand Wool Board.

The trend began when the new "fraternity knit" habit mushroomed throughout college campuses in the spring. Reportedly the fad was projected with rapid effects by a pair of twins, Jean and Jane King of Southwestern University. They both knitted a pair-of wool socks, hand finished the monogramed with fraternity insignia, and presented them to two male friends. A few flashes of the eye-dazzling footgear by the proud recipients and the campus craze was launched. Unlike many American college whimsies that are whams one day and washouts the next, the sock fad was not only launched; it was enthusiastically accepted. Within two months, co-eds were busily knitting wool socks on campuses as far north as Brown University in Rhode Island and as far west as the University of Colorado. Whatever the versions, the "fraternity knit" habit has become solidly established. Indubitably the 1948 college man, depending on the skill and imagination of his girl friends, will be colourfully and originally dressed from his shoe top to his trouser cuff. Tired fashion editors may well look to him to again initiate the rolled-up cuff line to better show off his leg art—or to balance the effect of the longer skirt.