In 2018 Birkenstock invited the students of the CSM BA Fashion History & Theory course to visit its archive in the US, Italy, Japan and Germany. Each research trip enabled students to extract and define the core elements of Birkenstock’s history spanning over 250 years.

The one-year long research resulted in a second project, where the CSM MA Fashion course was invited to produce their contemporary interpretation of an iconic style of the heritage German brand.

As a result of the Archive research and to complement the student designs, the iconic Birkenstock Tallahassee style from the 1990s sees a rebirth in contrast color designs as the first Archive Re-Issue style.