I'm not sure that there was ever a time when anyone got overly excited about socks... however, if it did happen, you can bet it was during the 50's. Let's face it, even I could probably get excited about some "clean white socks" if I had a pipe in my mouth, a brand new Lambretta, and a cute lady in formal wear and bouffant hair on the back!
This hearkens from a time when Innocenti actually had some competent people running their US operations. In the late 50's, Lambrettas sold well in the US, and they had creative Americans running their operations. One of the things they did was get Lambrettas into the hands of lots of Madison Avenue advertising firms for use in photo shoots. At some point around 1960, they sacked the Americans, and sent over a bunch of Italians for a plum assignment to live in New York. The Italians promptly ran the US distributor into the ground, and Piaggio ate them for lunch. Sad.