What do hippies, punks and nuns have in common? Well, Birkenstock explains it beautifully in new campaign.
Fashion has a wonderfully short memory. Every few years, it rediscovers something that has been sitting quietly in plain sight and presents it as the next big thing. Sensible sandals. Linen shirts. Buying fewer, better-made clothes instead of chasing every passing trend. Apparently, they're all having a moment. Which makes Birkenstock's latest campaign, produced in collaboration with animator Alina Golovlova, totally irresistible.
The iconic German footwear company has recreated one of its own newspaper advertisements from the 1980s as a charming handcrafted animation. Alongside the hippies, punks and other familiar Birkenstock wearers is a Catholic nun in her traditional habit, happily sporting the company's famous sandals as she plays hopscotch. The slogan is equally perfectly considered: "From hippies and punks to nuns and monks – some wear a habit, others make it one."
It's the sort of tagline that makes you smile because it works on more than one level. It also asks an intriguing question: have religious sisters been trendsetters all along?
Not intentionally, of course. No one enters a convent hoping to influence the next fashion season. The habit exists for almost the opposite reason. It's designed to shift the focus away from the individual rather than towards her. Which is precisely what makes Birkenstock's campaign so clever.
Inadvertently starting a movement
For years, the fashion world has been celebrating ideas that would have sounded perfectly ordinary in many convents: buying fewer things but buying them well, choosing comfort over discomfort, investing in quality, and wearing pieces that last for years rather than months. Religious sisters weren't trying to start a movement. They were simply getting on with their lives. Fashion eventually caught up.
Birkenstock deserves a quiet round of applause for recognizing that. It would have been easy to use the nun as a visual gag or to lean into the novelty of seeing a religious habit alongside hippies and punks. Instead, the company simply acknowledges what has apparently been true since at least the 1980s: sisters have been faithful Birkenstock wearers for decades, and they belong in the brand's story just as naturally as everyone else.
We have to say, there's something wonderfully confident about that. The campaign doesn't seem remotely anxious about whether a nun belongs next to a punk. It simply assumes she does. After all, they're both wearing the same sandals.
And once that thought lodges in your mind, it's surprisingly difficult to shake. If the sisters quietly got there first with sensible sandals, what else might they be ahead of the rest of us on?
The answer probably isn't another fashion trend. It might be the value of slowing down, owning less, making time for real community—or even setting aside a few quiet moments each day for prayer.
Now there's a trend no one saw coming!
