Thank You for Insulting Our Sandals

In a new film, Thank You For Smoking, the main character wears his Birkenstocks with pride. “Nothing says, ‘I want to tell you how to live your life’ more than Birkenstocks,” says Jason Reitman, the director of the film in an article in the NY Times. Birkenstock doesn’t seem to mind:

Scott Radcliffe, the marketing director at Birkenstock Distribution USA, said of [the main] character. Mr. Radcliffe said that the “Birkenstock-wearing, granola-crunching, Volvo-driving fill-in-the blank stereotype” emerged in the broader culture without any doing on the company’s part. The company finds it entertaining, he said, that the sandals have reached the kind of status that qualifies them for movie close-ups, even disparaging ones.

Thank You for Insulting Our Sandals – New York Times