Birkenstock Sandals

The German-made Birkenstock first landed stateside in the mid ‘60s when an American woman, back from a trip to a spa in Germany, introduced the shoe brand to the U.S. and began selling the now-iconic style in San Francisco.It was there that the counterculture crowd of the ‘70s embraced Birkenstocks and helped to associate the footwear with a free-living, bohemian lifestyle. That changed in the ‘90s when Birkenstocks had their first resurgence on college campuses and the brand got a boost when a certain Grunge-era British fashion model wore them in a magazine shoot. But when an impossibly stylish Celine designer sent models down the runway in 2012 in her own fur-lined twist on the Arizona sandal, a fashion furor ignited. Today the style is still going strong with myriad new styles and colors added to the lineup.