Not everyone wakes up with the revelation, “Eureka! I want to design socks!” Eszter, the mastermind behind Nebouxii, studied interior design at Budapest’s KREA art school, and after finishing she wanted to channel her energies to more creative endeavors than she could pursue at multinational companies. She left the grind to create colorful socks.
The name Nebouxii is a strange one, leaving potential customers unsure of how to pronounce it. And how is the logo of a walking bird associated with the brand? These were the first questions bugging us before meeting Eszter Sipos.
Somewhere along the way between conceiving of the sock-business idea and planning its launch, a name had to be chosen. Instead of the hipster practice of writing multiple words as one or separating them with a dot, Eszter wanted to build the brand around the socks. Then she came across the blue-footed booby, a pretty funny little bird: it has disproportionately huge turquoise-colored feet – meaning the bird is “wearing socks” all its life. The brand name comes from the Latin name of this bird species (Sula nebouxii). It should be pronounced “neh-boo-xee”. We just love this story.
The sock patterns are designed by Eszter and her business partner, Kata Kerekes. The colorful accessories are manufactured in a countryside factory, but at
the beginning, finding the right place was a problem. Impeccable yarn quality was crucial, as well as flexibility with patterns, since we are talking detailed drawings. Plus, there are models with non-identical left and right pairs –
not because of negligence;
this is a small twist on ordinary sock sales. They also plan on rolling out Nebouxii packs of three, five,
or seven
socks to
offer an automatic extra when a single sock goes astray on laundry day, surely
kidnapped by sock gremlins.
It seems that the public is more and more open to the different styles, so most of us are not disturbed by wildly colorful socks that
are fun to show off. In the experience of Eszter and Kata, North Europe has the largest fan base of people into funny
or
mismatched socks, but they have received letters of thanks, photos, and greetings from satisfied customers
all over the world, which suggests that many people
love the
mischievous spirit of
Nebouxii .Looking ahead, Nebouxii is currently working on a project with Absoloot print to create notebooks that match the socks. The brand is mostly available online; you can order your fave patterns via the webshop, and of course they are also present at Budapest design fairs.
