The Birkenstocks created with pieces of old Hermès bags

Irreverence is the stylistic figure of MSCHF, a Brooklyn collective that over the years has created artistic sneakers that made fun of the world of luxury and the neuroses of consumerism. After filling an Air Max 97 with holy water and tearing apart one of Damien Hirst's works by selling the fragments individually, the group of creatives went on the attack of Hermès' Birkin bags, tearing them apart and turning them into $76,000 Birkenstock sandals called, with the usual humour, Birkinstock. 

The idea has precedents in history: Dapper Dan's entire fame revolves around reusing Louis Vuitton and Gucci logos to recreate hip-hop-style dresses; while the 1999 episode in which Spaniard Miguel Adrover sent a skirt created from a Louis Vuitton suitcase to the catwalk remains famous. On the official website of the artistic collective, where the purchase can be made to order, there is a poster that tells the idea behind the project: 

Materials derive value from their place in history and culture. […] In the 1800s when aluminum was exotic and new, the bourgeois aristocrats of france prized their flimsy, inconvenient, aluminum cutlery more than their antique silverware. Today, Birkin Bags appreciate with an average 14% annual return […] and we can look to the birkin bag itself as the new luxury raw material par excellence. 

An initiative suspended between criticism, disrespect and celebration of the myth of Birkin, it also represents an ironic polemic against the great collaborations of luxury, which often barely include the addition of a logo and little else. But also an involuntary masterpiece of timing, with Birkenstock that, just these days, could end up in the hands of an LVMH-affiliated company. The artists, however, specify that Birkenstocks are not a collaboration but, returning to the theological lexicon dear to them, transubstantiation – a transformation of a banal shoe into the very substance of a myth of luxury.