B2.3MN BIRKENSTOCKS MADE FROM ACTUAL BIRKIN BAGS?
On the second Monday in February, the Banksys of consumer culture struck again. MSCHF, the Brooklyn, New York, collective that created the “Jesus shoe” (Nike sneakers with soles filled with holy water), “88 Holes” (a Damien Hirst spot painting with all the spots cut out and sold separately) and MSCHF X (an “impossible collab” wherein the group chopped up T-shirts from 10 streetwear fashion brands and patchworked them back together) has dropped its latest piece of social media catnip.
“The most exclusive sandal evermade” is a Birkenstock-like piece of footwear with an official Birkenstock cork-and-rubber sole, but with a leather upper made from purposefully chopped-up Hermès Birkin bags. Shock, horror, fashion sacrilege!
If Marcel Duchamp and Tom Sachs had a baby who was raised by Jeremy Scott of Moschino, this is what it might look like.
The “Birkinstock” is either a raspberry to the high-end fashion world and its sudden obsession with the outdoor recreation world; a pointed commentary on the cult of the Birkin, which has been labelled a better investment than gold; or a piece of performance art that gives new meaning to Joseph Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction. (There’s a manifesto on the group’s website to go with the shoes, full of high-minded meditations on resources, commodities and luxury.) Or it’s a cynical stunt calculated to break the internet, mocking hypebeast culture and profiting from it at the same time. Maybe all of the above.
“We’re just sort of fascinated with destroying expensive things and creating something new out of them,” said Daniel Greenberg, 23, MSCHF’s head of strategy (not that they are so into titles).
In any case, it is sure to put MSCHF, which thus far has made more noise in the art-technology-streetwear space, on the high-fashion radar. They’re trying to move beyond viral jokes into the meta-pop-pundit-sphere.
The shoes will be made to order and available while supplies last. Which, despite costing $34,000 (1 million baht) to $76,000, depending on the size of the customer’s foot, will probably not be very long, judging by both history and the availability of the raw material. The Jesus shoes sold out in one minute, the Hirst spots even faster. MSCHF bought only four Birkin bags to serve as
A Birkin bag and the MSCHF Birkinstocks, made from deconstructed Hermès Birkin bags with gold vermeil buckles and actual Birkenstock cork soles.
raw material, and three pairs of the shoes have already been sold: to Future, who is modelling his on his Instagram feed; Kehlani; and an unnamed art collector. Plus MSCHF is planning to keep one for itself. There may be only four to six pairs left. (For all of its posturing as a sort of guerrilla band of merry pranksters, the collective has a VIP list of celebrities and art collectors who get early access to the products when they are “at the expensive end of the spectrum”, said Gabriel Whaley, 31, the CEO.)
As to why they settled on a Birkin for their first entry into high fashion, aside from the obvious wordplay, Lukas Bentel, 28, one of MSCHF’s creative directors, explained: “Birkin bags are like a cultural meme, a symbol for a certain kind of wealth.” By “mashing it into a really accessible object”, they wanted to force people to perhaps question that symbolism. Plus, the wordplay really is kind of funny.
MSCHF was founded in 2016, and is normally based in the Williamsburg neighbourhood of Brooklyn, though employees are now scattered around the boroughs. It does drops the second and fourth Mondays of every month, ranging from abstract ideas like paying people to criticise companies it deems evil (Amazon, Facebook, Tesla) to concrete products like the Birkinstocks. And it has developed something of a rabid following on social media as well as among a handful of celebrities like Drake. Who, as it happens, is so obsessed with Birkins that he has multiple shelves devoted to thebags, which he collects for his future wife.
The Birkin, named for actress Jane Birkin, was created by Hermès in 1984 and famously holds its value; one of the most expensive bags ever sold at auction was a white Diamond Himalaya Niloticus crocodile Birkin 30 with 18ct white gold and diamond hardware, which went for more than $370,000 at Christie’s in Hong Kong in 2017. They are made byhand, take an artisan a minimum of 18 hourstomake, and demand generally exceeds supply, meaning there are waiting lists in Hermès boutiques for the bags.
MSCHF, however, did not bother with a list. Instead, the group bought four bags via resale sites for about $122,500, as well as some cheaper copies, which were used as practice to figure out how to take the bags apart so they could be remade as sandals. At least two leather workshops in Brooklyn turned the team down when contacted about the project, as they were so horrified by the idea of cutting up a Birkin.
“We know some people are going to react with, ‘What is wrong with you people?’,” Greenberg said. “But we’re OK being hated. We just don’t want apathy.”