Birkenstock has gone from being a radical concept &mdash; a foot-serving sandal &mdash; to a cultural icon and a wardrobe staple.

Forget statement heels or flashy sneakers. The true icon of modern footwear is a sandal that doesn&rsquo;t ask for much but offers everything: comfort so natural you forget you&rsquo;re wearing it, a design so adaptable it works as well with jeans as it does with a Jochen Gutzy runway gown, and a heritage so enduring it has walked from muddy country paths to Paris catwalks without breaking its stride. That sandal is Birkenstock.

The story begins in 1774 with Johannes Birkenstock, a shoemaker in a small German town where most people owned just one pair of shoes. Those shoes had to last for years, patched and repaired again and again. His family carried on the trade for generations. They weren&rsquo;t wealthy or glamorous. They were craftspeople, shaping leather by hand and making life a little easier for people on their feet all day.
That tempestuous philosophy &mdash; that shoes should serve the body, not the other way around &mdash; stayed in the family. In the late 1800s, Johanne&rsquo;s descendant Konrad took it further. At a time when shoes were built on little more than flat planks, identical for left and right, he introduces an anatomically shaped shoe last and began experimenting with flexible insoles that matched the curves of the foot. The idea was radical: shoes that feel like feet. The result was the first Birkenstock insole &mdash; later Konrad named two of them &mdash; footbed, a contoured base a philosophy that remains the foundation of every pair today.

In the 1960s, Birkenstock introduced its first sandal, the Madrid. Just one strap, the first built-in cork footbed and a sole, and nothing else. At the height of the stiletto era, it looked out of place. Shop owners dismissed it as ugly, unimaginative. But people who wore it felt something different. Doctors and nurses wore them during long shifts. Students and artists slipped them on and found a kind of freedom in their simplicity. Birkenstocks became a quiet rebellion against a culture obsessed with uncomfortable ideals of beauty.
From there, the sandals spread. In California, they became part of the hippie uniform. In Germany, professors, environmentalists and creatives wore them as a symbol of individuality. In Australia, it was much the same. Wherever they went, the message was clear: Birkenstocks weren&rsquo;t about fitting in but about standing comfortably in your own skin.

Eventually, fashion came around. By the 1980s, they appeared on runways. In the 1990s, Kate Moss was photographed in a pair. In Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs and the early tech crowd wore them daily, drawn to the same stripped-back simplicity that shaped their own work. By the 2000s, Birkenstock was collaborating with Heidi Klum, and later with Dior, and Valentino. The sandal once mocked as a &ldquo;tree trunk&rdquo; had become part of the luxury conversation.
And yet, at its core, nothing has changed. Straps, colours, and buckles may shift, but the footbed &mdash; made of cork and latex in German factories &mdash; remains the same. It is the non-negotiable element, designed to support the body to walk as nature intended.
That spirit is alive today in G&ouml;rlitz. When the factory opened in 2009, just 350 people worked there. Now, nearly 1,900 people work there, utilising a production space that has expanded to 43,000 square metres.

Step inside and the first thing you notice is the smell of cork and leather, earthy and warm. The hum of machines is harmonised with the sharper sound of steel blades cutting straps. Workers move between stations with practised ease: footbed bakers tending ovens that release a faint, resin-like scent; mould changers lifting heavy forms that clank against metal; process engineers checking for the tiniest imperfections. 82 different roles, each with its own rhythm, all adding up to something deceptively simple. What began as a modest plant has become a small city of shoemaking, proof that Birkenstock&rsquo;s quiet philosophy has only gathered strength.
According to Jochen Gutzy, Chief Communication Officer of Birkenstock, the brand&rsquo;s purpose was simple from the onset: to design footwear that keeps feet healthy and moving as they should. That mission still rests on the same foundation today &ndash; the footbed. It&rsquo;s what makes a walk on city streets feel closer to walking on soft ground, and it&rsquo;s what ensures function is never compromised. The idea is that everyone, no matter their age or background, deserves shoes that allow them to move naturally.
Staying true to that core doesn&rsquo;t mean avoiding change. The cork-latex footbed has barely shifted in design because it works, but the world built around it keeps evolving. New materials, colours, and collaborations add freshness without losing what makes the shoes instantly recognisable. That balance is the heart of the brand identity: a steady foundation with space to explore. It isn&rsquo;t chasing trends, but it also isn&rsquo;t afraid to experiment. That&rsquo;s why Birkenstock feels both timeless and current &ndash; deep-rooted in tradition while still open to what&rsquo;s next.

Here, L&rsquo;OFFICIEL speaks with Gutzy on the future of Birkenstock.

L&rsquo;OFFICIEL: The brand is both a cultural icon and a serious name in orthopaedic footwear. What&rsquo;s the most surprising challenge you&rsquo;ve faced in keeping those two worlds in sync?
JOCHEN GUTZY: Balancing those two worlds starts with staying true to our purpose and our core values &mdash; function, quality, and tradition. More than two and a half centuries of heritage in shoemaking bring responsibility, but they also demand our full attention. We have no intention of becoming like old masters in museums: admired, but somewhat out of time.
We continue to change, adapt, and take inspiration from the world around us &mdash; always striving for innovation. Our creative hub in Paris and designer collaborations give us the creative freedom to explore, but also new environments or different usage occasions bring the challenge. We&rsquo;re not a footwear- or sandal brand &mdash; we&rsquo;re a footbed company. That&rsquo;s our core. We simply bring the footbed to people&rsquo;s lives in different forms and places, without ever compromising on function or quality, and always staying true to our roots: committed to healthy feet.
I believe that&rsquo;s also why people turn to our brand: authentic, relevant values. Especially in times of fast-changing trends and hypes, people look for that sense of grounding. It&rsquo;s interesting &mdash; Birkenstock stood for anti-establishment, often worn as a quiet sign of protest. Today, we might be seen as more on trend than ever. But what matters is that we keep inspiring &mdash; and stay inspired by the people who choose us. As our CEO likes to say, people might come to Birkenstock for a thousand wrong reasons, but they stay for the right one: walking as nature intended.

LO: The cork footbed is iconic, but if you had to reinvent it with a material of the future, what would that be?
JG: The cork footbed is iconic for a reason &ndash; it works. Made from natural materials, its structure supports the complex system of bones, joints, and muscles in the foot, and it has been central to our identity for decades.
But we&rsquo;re not limited to these natural materials of the classic footbed we use in models like the Arizona or Boston. Our innovation teams continually explore new materials and push the boundaries of what the footbed can do. When we think about the future, it&rsquo;s less about replacing cork and more about bringing the footbed to new environments. That&rsquo;s what we&rsquo;ve done with our EVA styles &mdash; they carry the same footbed principles, but are completely water-ready. Or take our professional line, designed for people on their feet all day &mdash; chefs, healthcare workers, or gardeners. There, we use PU outsoles for added slip resistance and pair them with exchangeable footbeds that can be washed or disinfected. Rather than changing what&rsquo;s inside, we adapt what&rsquo;s around it &mdash; always keeping the core the same and letting the footbed do what it is meant to do. There have been people hiking in their Arizonas &mdash; why not offer them a footbed solution that is tailored to the specific needs up in the mountains?&nbsp;
&nbsp;
LO: When you present Birkenstock&rsquo;s story to the world, is it a challenge to make sure that it feels authentic in countries that have completely different ideas of comfort and heritage?
JG: We start from something universal: every human foot works the same way. That gives us a very honest starting point. Comfort or trend might mean different things to different people, but the biomechanics of walking don&rsquo;t change. We&rsquo;re fully aware that foot shapes vary across the globe, but our purpose is a universal one. Our heritage &mdash;and even some of the cultural moments tied to Birkenstock &mdash; might resonate differently from place to place, and that&rsquo;s the beauty of it. We embrace this diversity. We never dictate anything: no trend, no styling. It&rsquo;s as simple as this &mdash; we provide the second-best solution after walking barefoot, and that speaks to everybody, no matter their age or where they live. It&rsquo;s like a blank canvas: we bring the footbed, and footbed lovers do the rest.

LO: Many shoe brands chase trends aggressively and Birkenstock seems to resist that. Is restraint a strategy, or simply part of the company&rsquo;s DNA?
JG: We&rsquo;ve never chased trends &mdash; our focus has always been on timeless design and function. If anything, trends find us, or turn toward the footbed, our distinctive design language or identify with what we stand for. Birkenstock has been part of the zeitgeist for quite some time now, but when Karl Birkenstock first introduced his sandal, it went completely against the fashion of its day. From a business perspective, it was quite a disaster and back then, no one wanted to buy the shoes. But Karl Birkenstock believed in his philosophy and his design and worked on the next styles, year after year. It was a bold, almost defiant idea he followed despite pushbacks from the industry &ndash; and that spirit still runs through the company. We&rsquo;re committed to something bigger than trends. That&rsquo;s probably why we stay relevant: because we&rsquo;re not trying to be. We continue doing what we do best.
&nbsp;
LO: How do you personally wear Birkenstocks, and has that changed over time?
JG: I&rsquo;m an Arizona lover through and through &mdash; I have it in all kinds of executions, as you can imagine after so many years with the company. Living in Germany, I often reach for our closed models as well &mdash; I really love our shoes. My all-time favourite is the Bend, and recently I&rsquo;ve gotten into our boots collection. Living close to the mountains, they&rsquo;re a perfect addition to an already full shoe closet.
&nbsp;
LO: Sustainability is almost a given in fashion conversations today. What do you think people often misunderstand about what true sustainability means for a company like yours?
JG: To us, sustainability means creating products that last &mdash; pieces people can wear for decades. It&rsquo;s about responsibility. We&rsquo;re not big fans of sustainability as a topic in itself, and certainly not as a marketing tool. Materials, quality, and the people who create our products are what matter to us. Because our products are timeless and their quality is never compromised, sustainability is built in. We simply keep acting according to our core values &mdash; for the sake of the brand and the product.

LO: If you had to pick one Birkenstock style to represent the brand forever, which would it be?
JG: Since we don&rsquo;t see ourselves as a footwear brand but as a footbed company, I&rsquo;d probably choose the footbed in its purest form &mdash; the Madrid. It was the family&rsquo;s first creation and the first shoe the family ever produced at scale. Stripped of logos or branding, it tells the story of who we are: function and quality at the core, built on &nbsp;heritage of innovation and purpose. The Madrid is simple, timeless &mdash; a true representation of the brand.
&nbsp;
LO: How has the perception of &ldquo;ugly chic&rdquo; shaped the way you think about design, especially since the brand has always been part of that conversation?
JG: &ldquo;Ugly chic&rdquo; has never been something we set out to create or chase &mdash; it&rsquo;s more of a byproduct of staying true to our purpose. Our focus has always been on function and quality, and that authenticity is what people respond to, even if it doesn&rsquo;t fit conventional fashion ideals. Not only during COVID, when people were spending more time at home and focused on what felt good and did good, we saw a rise in interest &mdash; especially among younger consumers. But what&rsquo;s important &mdash; beyond these moments, we&rsquo;ve remained relevant to these new audiences. We&rsquo;ve proven that good design doesn&rsquo;t have to follow traditional beauty standards. It can be honest, functional and enduring &mdash; and that can become &ldquo;chic&rdquo; in its own way. So we let the footbed and our visible materials be the foundation. The result is a product people love for the right reasons: it works, it lasts, and it feels right.
&nbsp;
LO: What do you think the next-gen of Birkenstock wearers will demand that might surprise us today?
JG: I think the next generation will demand versatility and adaptability in ways we&rsquo;re only just beginning to explore. They&rsquo;ll expect our products to fit seamlessly into their lives &mdash; whether that&rsquo;s urban life, professional settings, or outdoor adventures &mdash; without compromising the function and support they&rsquo;ve come to trust. They might also surprise us with how much they care about transparency and the story behind our product. I&rsquo;m almost certain their demands won&rsquo;t change what we&rsquo;ve always stood for: functions, quality, and authenticity. They&rsquo;ll simply push us to apply those values in new ways &mdash; and that&rsquo;s exciting.

The quiet power of Birkenstock in redefining everyday luxury

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