Birkenstock’s Central Saint Martins collaboration highlights four emerging designers

March 1 marked the much-anticipated launch of the Central Saint Martins X Birkenstock collaboration, that includes the works of 4 successful MA Style graduates.

This thrilling venture has been two years within the making, following the CSM BA Style Historical past & Principle college students’ preliminary sequence of analysis journeys to Birkenstock archives within the US, Germany, Japan, and Italy, the place they submerged themselves within the model’s 250-year historical past. The 2018 investigation led to a design initiative calling on college students of the MA Style course to place their very own spin on the enduring Birkenstock shoe; and, in flip, information the model into the long run.

Among the many 4 graduates is Saskia Lenaerts, whose work entails the invention of limitations. Lenaerts designed The Terra Fashion with a transparent nod to Birkenstock’s quintessential Milano Sandal, and as a celebration of the foot itself.

Alecsander Rothschild, a Danish designer, seeks to impress the thoughts and eye in addition to gender stereotypes. By means of his love of sculpture, his Bukarest shoe is a commemoration of unpolluted and geometric design, making the shoe an artwork type.

British designer Alex Wolfe has designed his personal model of the Rotterdam Moto Sandal. Impressed by his questioning of masculinity inside the motocross sphere, Wolfe’s shoe features a shin guard for the trendy warrior.
The fourth and last shoe, designed by Dingyun Zhang, is known as The Cosy Fashion. Zhang is pushed by the need to realize a extra sustainable future for trend. In homage to the unique objective of footwear, he has created a shoe that prioritizes utility and luxury over luxurious.

The designers’ fashionable and placing takes on Birkenstock’s iconic sneakers are a refreshing change, highlighting present points corresponding to gender expectations and sustainability inside trend. The collaborative venture affords an encouraging glimpse into the way forward for an business that thrives on fixed reinvention.