a law unto thems-health sock

Age 4 April 1985 p. 26

I have a complete thing going on with Humphrey Law socks. Yes they are the very expensive socks you can seemingly only get from David Jones these days (or a place at the Victoria Market which is rapidly running out of them because I keep going there). No doubt this is one of the reasons why middle aged men are so smug, not Humphrey Law socks per se but because they have been round the block a bit and think their niche preferences indicate that they know everything. But it is a stunningly good sock. I have a lot of the thick alpaca ones, lovely, and a number of other varieties the exact specs of I couldn't summon to mind only that I know what I like. Right now I am wearing a fresh pair in a strange salmon colour which I have had sitting around all week I just hadn't put them on because I was so much enjoying the other HL socks I bought I kept washing and rewearing them. 

I'd like to also tell you something informative about Humphrey Law but I can't really, well, a little bit. The company is first mentioned in the papers on 13 September 1950 (p. 17), this ad: 

But they first make their real strides three years later when it's revealed in the press (the Age again) that CSIRO has developed a way to stop woollen socks from shrinking and thus brought them back to a better competitive position with synthetic fibres. Humphrey Law (it was a Harvey Norman-type situation: their website says 'In 1947 Sidney Humphrey and Albert Law formed a partnership to make socks in Australia') announced they would be using this process in their socks: Albert Law is quoted discussing the process which applies resin in umpteen 'spot-welds' to the fibres stopped their usual response to moisture. This treatment was called the Belmont process. 

The company appeared to trundle on through the 50s, 60s and 70s without any actual advertising of their own, just mentioned in department stores' ads (so they presumably had some kind of reputation of their own as a quality brand) then in the 80s they began to promote themselves. Which is interesting in itself. This ad is from the Sydney Morning Herald 23 September 1989 p. 268. 

In the early 1990s the company is ardently promoting its grass seed sock ('How much time have you spent removing those torturous points of pain from socks', expressed as a statement not a question). I don't know if this is commonly available anymore but there are some on eBay. I am not usually one to suffer from grass seeds in my socks but you never know, maybe I should invest. 

eBay also has a bulk buy option for health socks, I'd be silly not to really wouldn't I. 

Although the cushion foot bit makes me feel a bit weird. Nevertheless. I am sorely tempted.

This is their premises on Google Earth, they've been here for seventy years or more ('They built a factory on land that had been a lemon orchard in the bush at Heathmont about 20 miles out of Melbourne,' says the website). They don't have any signage.