This summer BIRKENSTOCK is celebrating two anniversaries. The brand, 250 years old and more contemporary than ever, celebrates 150 years since the birth of Konrad Birkenstock and 50 years of one of its most successful silhouettes, the Arizona.
The first mention of Birkenstock can be found in the church archives of Langen-Bergheim, a small German village. Johann Adam Birkenstock appears there in 1774 as a shoemaker, and from then on his family was involved in shoemaking. Konrad, his grandson born in June 1873, took over the family business and revolutionised the manufacturing process with a simple observation. Previously, lasts were symmetrical or even rectangular because they were easier to make, but this type of shoe bore no relationship to the actual shape of the foot.
Konrad proposed a three-dimensional last that would conform to the foot’s shapes and volumes. It was the shoe that had to adapt to the foot, a seemingly simple but revolutionary idea. Konrad shaped the footbed, the centrepiece of BIRKENSTOCK shoes, inspired by the imprint of a foot in the sand, but his work remained in the form of hundreds of handmade prototypes. Konrad died in 1950 and it was his son Carl who took his ideas and, inspired by Brutalist architecture rather than shoe trends, created a shoe that aspired to modernity without losing the family ideal.
It was not just about making the best product possible; it was also about spreading the word through courses in which podiatrists from all over the world learned about the benefits of the “Carl Birkenstock System” which was even turned into a book. Madrid, the first sandal with an original BIRKENSTOCK footbed, was marketed as a “fitness sandal” due to its comfort.
In the 1960s, Margot Fraser discovered BIRKENSTOCK sandals in Germany. Convinced of their health benefits, she began importing them to the United States, where they found new life. The first BIRKENSTOCKs were sold in health-related stores rather than shoe stores, which set them on a completely different path.
In 1973, the year that marks the centenary of Konrad Birkenstock’s birth, the Arizona was born, a pair of two-strap sandals that over time became a countercultural myth. Like many other items in which function leads the way for design, the Arizona was a blank page on which to tell new experiences. Linked from their beginnings with seventies subcultures, they returned in the nineties as the footwear of the new summer of love, with Kate Moss as the main influence and Grunge in Marc Jacobs’ vision for Perry Ellis.
150 years after the birth of Konrad Birkenstock and 50 years after the creation of the Arizona, the two meet in a celebration in which the original ideas of one are mixed with the lines of an article that maintains their style.
Arizona, Boston and many more Birkenstock, available at FOOTDISTRICT.