Toy story gets a 'sock'er punch

If you’re looking for something fun with a meaningful cause attached, then these two young Bengaluru girls might just give it to you on a platter. Seema Seth and Pooja Mehta of Footsy are creating little creatures made with love and laughter—Sock Dolls, that are loveable, huggable and just a wee bit unconventional.

They use surplus and left over socks to create cute monsters, cats with moustaches, octopus, little owls, etc. They have also collaborated with Shen, (‘snow leopard’ in the Spitian language) to work with their immensely skilled group of women who knit magic with their hands.

“Keeping with our ethos of ‘play a little’, we’ve introduced a playful collection for the first time in India. These are made from our surplus stock and handcrafted into cute creations. They are handcrafted using our surplus stock, which would otherwise be wasted. We held onto our surplus stock over the last few years, because we thought it would be wasteful to just discard them. We’ve given an otherwise discarded material a new form and identity,” shares Seema, a graduate from Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology who also runs Studio Sky on her creative innovations.

The girls also have a category of handmade woollen socks called Snugglers. “These are foot warmers, to be worn indoors. We have collaborated with Shen, a social enterprise based in Spiti Valley, Himachal Pradesh, run by The Nature Conservation Foundation and Snow Leopard Trust. We are indirectly supporting the community in Spiti Valley. Most of our grandmothers hand-knitted these at home for cold winter evenings. We’ve taken the same idea, but tried to make them more trendy with the use of colour and embellishments such as flowers and pompoms. Our products are all affordable,” shares Pooja who graduated from Mudra Institute of Communication in design management and walks the line between business and design on the affordable range.

Talking of the entrepreneurial challenges Seema states, “Socks are a difficult material to work with for toys, since they stretch based on how you handle it.”