Athletic Socks Article

Smartwool Socks vs Traditional Wool Socks

The first thing which comes to your mind about the term wool socks is either your great grandma's knitting club, either modern clothes industry with brands and mass produced socks, isn't it. What are the important differences between the two?

First of all, wool is made by God himself, he gave wool to the sheep, and you get the godsend features! Wool keeps the sheep very warm, even when it's wet. Wool keeps you warm in the winter but doesn't in the summer, believe it or not. Wool is very durable fabric, wool socks can last you for a very long time. It's much harder to get blisters with wool socks. Unlike synthetic fabric, wool doesn't block the air flow. All in all, it's a good example of 100% natural material which cannot be made better by human.

However!

Human have their role in making the fiber for knitting, and the socks. Also, human have some special needs apart from the sheep. Wool is wicking and in the modern age more and more people are oversensitive to this kind of itching. Some people are too sensitive; they call it an allergy - the modern kind of decease. You might experience some bad smell from your feet if you use the wool socks regularly on bare feet.

Smartwool socks are manufactured with great care, during the whole process: all kinds of allergic content is removed and there are several other improvements over traditional fabricated wool. Smartwool wool is being made from the special breed of sheep from New Zealand, you could call it "super Merino". The fabric is made of 90 percent keratin, which is a resilient protein. Keratin is actually resistant to bacteria and chemical attack, which this why Smartwool is really "smart". Needless to say, this keeps your skin more healthy, but this also avoids the bad smell. This super wool is made of extremely fine micron, between one-tenth and one-third thicknesses of a human hair. This avoids the itching.

It's a huge step further from keeping your wet skin warm: The cuticle cells of Smartwool socks are coated with wax, which help to keep water or any kind of liquid away. It really makes the liquid into a vapor and releases it into the atmosphere.