Every one of us, at some point in the year, when the days start getting longer and the sun really starts to warm things up, puts closed shoes away in a corner and pulls out, from boxes, basements or attics, our beloved BIRKENSTOCK, the ones we know will get us through the entire summer. Now that summer is coming to an end, the thought of having to give up that comfort and that quiet-luxury style wears us down. Many of us are willing to freeze our feet a little just to put off going back to closed shoes for as long as possible.
But it seems that this year we’re no longer forced to face all that. In fact, with the new Moc Toe line, BIRKENSTOCK officially stops being synonymous exclusively with “summer shoe.”
No longer just Boston and Arizona: the German brand, famous for its footbed – as we’ve already told you – has come up with an entire range of closed-toe footwear, perfect for going back to the office, for walking over the first fallen leaves, and for getting through the whole winter. Comfort will finally no longer be a feature of summer alone, but will stay with us all year long.
A stitch that comes from workwear culture
The quiet protagonist of this evolution is a technical detail with a story all its own: the moc toe stitch, that raised U-shaped line running across the tip of the shoe. It’s not a contemporary aesthetic flourish, but a direct reference to early twentieth-century workwear culture, when footwear first and foremost had to withstand and support the movement of people who worked on their feet all day. BIRKENSTOCK picks it up and reinterprets it across three distinct silhouettes, standing out once again for its ability to turn a functional element into a recognizable signature.
The three newcomers move across different registers but remain, unmistakably, BIRKENSTOCK. The Naples Wrapped is a hybrid between a clog and a moccasin, semi-open, with a crossover strap that nods to the penny loafer in a preppy key: the perfect shoe for anyone not quite ready to fully give up the “slip on and go” idea. The Utti Lace, on the other hand, plays on softness, with a discreet lacing system free of metal eyelets that accentuates its minimalist character. It almost looks like a sculptural moccasin molded around the foot. And then there’s the Highwood Moc, the most urban and structured of the three, with metal eyelets and a chunky sole that makes it just as suited to the office as to a walk on a rainy day.
The footbed, always and forever the true star of the show
At the core of every one of these models remains the brand’s unmistakable goal, that is, making people walk as if they were barefoot. In the two closed silhouettes, Utti Lace and Highwood Moc, the DEEP BLUE FOOTBED comes into play, a more technical version of the legendary footbed, designed specifically for closed-toe shoes. It has it all: a microfiber lining that regulates temperature and moisture, a layer of woven jute, and a cork-EVA stabilizing element that distributes weight evenly. It’s the same orthopedic principle that turned BIRKENSTOCK into a case study, now applied to a season, autumn and winter, that had so far stayed outside the brand’s perimeter.
Anyone who wears BIRKENSTOCK in summer knows how hard it is to do without them, to the point of barely needing any other shoe. Now it’s time to find out whether the same will hold true for winter, and the shared dream will no longer be a giant Carrie Bradshaw-style shoe closet, but a properly sized BIRKENSTOCK one.
The new line is available at select retailers and on the BIRKENSTOCK website.
