What's an Awesome Sock?
The Awesome Socks Club is a monthly sock subscription that delivers a new pair of socks designed by independent artists to subscribers once a month. It was the founding subscription of Good Store and has over 30,000 subscribers. 100% of the profit from the Awesome Socks Club goes towards building the Maternal Center of Excellence in Sierra Leone.
Commissioning
Artists
There are several things that I look for when commissioning artists. The first, and especially for socks, the most important point is to choose an artist with a style that lends itself to a knit medium. A very painterly artist or one that works in extremely fine detail might not be a good fit because there is a limit to the colors we can use in a sock and a limit to the detail that we can include.
The next point is, does this artist fit the awesome socks style? Awesome socks are bright and playful. We want an artist that doesn’t take themselves or their work too seriously, and one that likes to play with colors and bold shapes.
When I have a large pool of artists based off of the above points, I will then look at them with a curatorial eye. I see the Awesome Socks Club as the storytelling of the year, so thematically I will divide artists into “spring,” “summer,” “autumn,” and “winter” artists based off of their subject matter, style, and color use. Once I have an equally divided batch I will then send out commissioning requests along with the creative briefs.