Jil Sander’s Lucie and Luke Meier Are Birkenstock’s Latest Designer Collaborators

Also, with Arc’teryx [the high performance label with whom the Meiers have also collaborated], you know, it’s also something that we wouldn’t be able to do on our own. It’s something where, again. There’s an expertise. They add something that we couldn’t do, we give them something that they wouldn’t maybe do on their own, either. And you arrive at a point that’s exciting rather than a marketing exercise.

Is this a one-time thing, or…?

Luke: At this point, we don’t know yet what’s going to happen after this season. Going back to my experience with Supreme and collaboration projects in general, you always have quite a big learning curve at the beginning, because obviously there’s a lot of stuff outside of the actual product: you have distribution, communication, pricing, and all of this stuff to sort out. Subsequent seasons are actually much easier. I can’t speak on behalf of Birkenstock and what they’ve done with their other projects, but I think, it’ll just depend if it feels right for us to continue. I think we look at it from the perspective of whether it fits in with where we’re going, rather than did it sell out in two minutes.