colors - Essential Homme Magazine

Viktor Tell and Mikael Söderlindh | Photo: Courtesy of Happy Socks

Founded by Viktor Tell and Mikael Söderlindh exactly 10 years ago, Happy Socks has since sold 40 million pairs of socks. The two Swedes did exactly what no one has ever thought to do: give this forgotten, often unloved, fetish and oddity the attention and care it deserves.

Fast forward 10 years and Happy Socks has seen many collaborations, including The Beatles, A$AP Rocky, Rolex, and Snoop Dogg. Their socks have been sold at Barney’s New York and Opening Ceremony as well as their brandname boutiques themselves. Happy Socks make socks actually cool.

But the journey really started at home, in Sweden, where it’s custom to remove your shoes in the home. “Socks are quite important to our culture,” the duo explains. “So on the weekend you put on your nice socks,” which they would jokingly call ‘happy socks.’ The rest is history.

Happy Socks now carry an inventory of endless patterns of the original product, as well as underwear and swimwear. The latest drop from the brand is a collab with Keith Haring and a 10th bday box including 11 limited edition pairs of socks.

Looking ahead at the next 10 years, the founders plant to focus on detail and put in even more effort into their socks. To celebrate, yesterday Viktor and Mikael gathered NYC over some pizza, blowup floaties, and sock madness.

Take a look at some of our favorite Happy Socks collabs:

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The thing about Urbanears is that they’re priced so swimmingly that it’s not beyond total reason to collect them. Yes. A headphone collection. Kind of excessive but stick with us…That pop color on your ears has the same effect as a tie, pocketsquare, hat, sock, bag—whatever accessory you already got a series of. Going tonal? Take it head to toe. In the mood to clash? You’ll be heard. And Compliments? They’ll be understood as well. We know this, you know this and they know this, which is why every season they tease us with a few new, limited run colors. Today they’ve launched their Spring 2013 colors—petrol, olive and coral. Kind of darker colors than you’d expect for spring, which is cool since we like a challenge. Speaking of…a challenge for Urbanears— how about a cool a headphone storage/display unit, because the hanging shoe rack we have housing all of ours is starting to fill up. Just sayin’… Check out the new colors after the jump.