Iris Socks

Seven of them, in the right order, running down your leg.

People who know the symbols will check the order before they say anything. So here it is, plainly.

Read it from the cuff down

On one sock they stack up in a single straight column on black. Violet first, highest, up by the cuff — the crown, petals opening the whole way round an empty middle. Indigo next for the third eye: one downward triangle in a circle, a petal on either hand. Blue for the throat, a circle inside a collar of small points. Green for the heart, made of two triangles laid across one another into a star. Gold for the solar plexus. Orange for the sacral. And nearest the foot, red — the root, a downward triangle shut inside a square. That is crown to root, the way the old diagrams lay it out. Gold star specks fill in whatever space is left over.

• The other sock is no copy of the first — it carries a neon rosette instead: violet petals around the outside, then blue, then green, then a ring of gold, and a small red bloom dead centre. Worked from outside in, it runs the order the column runs.
• The black underneath is not one flat black — a mandala is printed into it a shade deeper, petals and dotted lacework covering the whole leg, and it shows up when the light comes across at an angle.
• The ends are black, toe and heel — they stay plain, so nothing on your shoes has to argue with seven colours at once.
• Printed as far up as the cuff goes — the artwork does not surrender to a plain band up there, which is what separates a design you wear from one that hides inside your boot.

One size, made one at a time

There is a single women's size, so the only decision left is which of these you want on your feet. Nothing sits boxed and waiting either: a pair goes to print once somebody asks for it. That is why the size never quietly vanishes from the menu, and why whatever turns up at your door was made for one person.