ADVOCATE ORNAMENT

The Advocate Foundation’s limited-edition, numbered, and hand-painted ornament; perfect gift for the new home owner or Dallas transplant. Sales benefit neighborhood organizations. 214.292.0486 foundation.advocatemag.com

Socks are the new tie, Kelly Largent says. “It’s another way to express yourself.” Add the element of surprise, and you’ve got Foot Cardigan. Largent is one of the five founders of the subscription-based sock-of-the-month club that launched in June. Customers sign up to receive a randomly chosen pair of “delightfully unusual” socks in the mail for $9 a month. “Who gets cool mail anymore?” Bryan DeLuca says. “It’s like playing the lottery, but you always win.” DeLuca came up with the idea for Foot Cardigan during a three-month trip to Europe where he forgot to bring enough socks. “All they had in the store were really weird socks. I bought 10 pair, even though I only needed two. I fell in love with very weird, funny socks.” He pitched the idea to Largent. “He said, ‘Dude, I’m in.’ When Kelly latches onto an idea, you know it’s good. He’s kind of quiet, so when he says something, it matters.” They added to the team Matt McClard, who developed the website, creative genius Matt Fry, and Lake Highlands resident Tom Browning, who recently quit his day job to focus on Foot Cardigan full-time. In September, the guys moved from buying socks wholesale to designing and manufacturing their own. Their first project is Sock the Vote, which features two pairs of socks — one embroidered with a Barack Obama image and the other with Mitt Romney. Foot Cardigan ships socks all over the country and has started receiving requests internationally. “For the price of two lattes a month, you get something fun,” Browning says. “You can wear them with uniforms, pants, shorts and, unfortunately, sandals. We neither judge nor condone that.”

—Emily Toman