American founding father, inventor and thinker Mr Benjamin Franklin once noted that “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. But if you are a man of a certain age – let’s say over 30 rather than the 18th century – you can add receiving a pair of socks as a gift to that list. And no matter how stuffed your sock drawer is, that is no bad thing.

From the giver’s perspective, socks make sense. Men are notoriously difficult to buy for. Lego sets generally go out of style around the age of 10. Streaming has rendered record tokens and DVDs obsolete, so unless the man in question has niche interests and his grandma has access to rare Japanese vinyl imports, such offerings are no longer an option.

Clothing is always a good bet, but even the closest of friends and family don’t always know what best suits their beneficiary, let alone their shoe size. A pair of socks, then, is a reliable recourse. It is, after all, a gift that fits most feet. And the right pair can lift most outfits by several feet, too.

There’s a sense of play and freedom to them, also. Socks have long been seen as the one place where a man is free to experiment. Even if the rest of his wardrobe is awash with grey and navy, or exclusively monochromatic, there will always be a rogue rouge sock lurking – if just to suddenly appear, unwanted, in a whites wash.

Now, in the epoch of dopamine dressing, all bets are off. Today, displaying our interior lives in a mishmash of psychedelic prints and patterns is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. This brave new world can be intimidating for some, so think of your socks as the gateway and slip into a brightly coloured tie-dye pair. Can a man ever have too many socks when each pair is a vehicle for expressing his emotional state?