Profit and Loss

Birkenstock, the German sandal company once associated with Steve Jobs, people who make their own yogurt and the guys in my high school who played hacky sack in the hallways, raised $1.48 billion in an initial public offering this week. “Somehow one feels that a person in Birkenstocks is less likely to trample Nature than someone wearing clunky wing tips,” The Times wrote in 1992. Will the wing tips of Wall Street prove benevolent custodians of a company whose C.E.O. once told Michael Lewis, “If the company were compelled to answer to shareholders, it would destroy us”?

That was in 2004, after some Berkeley business school students visited Birkenstock’s headquarters and advised them on how to optimize their corporate social responsibility initiatives to increase their profits. The company was skeptical, seeing publicizing good works as antithetical to the brand’s ethos of inconspicuous philanthropy. Since then, Birkenstock has nevertheless moved ever more decisively into the mainstream. In 2022, thanks in part to partnerships with fashion designers like Dior and Valentino, the company reported over a billion dollars in sales, up from around $300 million in 2014.

I came to Birkenstock acceptance recently, less for reasons of fashion or principle than for expediency: I could no longer ignore the alarm bells of impending mechanical breakdown coming from my own feet. Where once I might have suffered the rolled ankles, blisters, cramping and toenail mangling wrought by a pair of uncomfortable but aesthetically gratifying shoes, now I have more literally pedestrian concerns. I want to be able to walk. Not just now, but for the rest of my life, on the one pair of feet I’ve been issued. The fact that fashion has decreed cool a sandal with a cork-latex footbed that molds to the specific contours of one’s own barking dogs seems a massive stroke of luck for the ingrown-toenailed and the bunion-afflicted, for those of us with what I’ve increasingly taken to calling simply “bad feet.”

I’ve written before about trying to be an ethical consumer, to buy less, and only from companies whose principles align with my own. Reading about Birkenstock’s history of doing good works without much fanfare, about how they resisted the Berkeley students’ counsel to be more public about their philanthropy, I wondered about how answering to investors would change the company. “For a footwear name long associated with family ownership and social movements linked with critiques of capitalist systems,” my colleague Elizabeth Paton wrote this week, “going public at a time of global economic volatility could create reputational blowback. Especially if pleasing investors means compromising on quality or shifting production away from Germany, where 95 percent of products are assembled, then hand-checked in factories owned by the brand.”

Trying to unbraid a company’s ethics from its profit motive is tricky for a consumer. I have been trying to get around this by buying things already used, but this isn’t simple either. There’s something very intimate (and, depending on the shoe, a little gross) about buying used shoes, of walking, as the poet Galway Kinnell put it, “on the steppingstones / of someone else’s wandering.”

Scrolling through images of vintage Lady Red Wings, an aggressively plain oxford that is no longer manufactured, but to whose jolie-laide orthopedic qualities, like Birkenstocks’, I’m magnetically drawn, I try to imagine the person who originally owned these shoes. What led that person to buy them? Were they attracted by the brand’s professed ethics? Were their “bad feet” eased by the soft foam soles? And what, ultimately, led them to part with them?

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THE WEEK IN CULTURE

• Thousands of Palestinians fled northern Gaza ahead of a possible ground invasion. Israel softened its initial 24-hour timetable for evacuations; “We understand it will take time,” a military spokesman said.

• President Biden said the U.S. would work to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as it supports the Israeli response. “The overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas,” he said.

• How did Hamas outmaneuver the most powerful military in the Middle East? Videos from last weekend’s massacre show its fighters knew Israel’s secrets.

Other Big Stories

CULTURE CALENDAR

📺 “Saturday Night Live” (Saturday): Now that the writers’ strike has ended, late-night television is back, and that includes “Saturday Night Live.” The sketch comedy show returns for its 49th season, following a strike-shortened 48th, with a season premiere hosted by the “S.N.L.” alumnus and Staten Island Ferry boat owner Pete Davidson. Ice Spice is the musical guest. The entire Season 48 cast is back (fingers crossed for a new “Lisa From Temecula” skit!), plus a new featured member, Chloe Troast.

🎬 “Killers of the Flower Moon” (Friday): This long-awaited movie about the murders of members of the Osage nation in the 1920s is Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of the book written by David Grann. It comes with a star-studded cast (Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jesse Plemons), a breakthrough performance by Lily Gladstone and a 3½-hour running time. When our chief film critic Manohla Dargis saw it at Cannes, she described it as “shocking, at times crushingly sorrowful, a true-crime mystery that in its bone-chilling details can make it feel closer to a horror movie.”

Dumpling Noodle Soup

Is there a chill in the air? Are we slipping into soup season? Hetty Lui McKinnon’s dumpling noodle soup is a quick way to satisfy your brothiest cravings when the cold winds blow. Loosely inspired by wonton noodle soup, a combination of grated ginger, garlic, turmeric and miso paste add a particularly rich savoriness to the fragrant broth, and frozen dumplings (any kind: vegetables, shrimp, chicken or pork) stand in for the wontons. Hetty adds bok choy and broccoli for color and freshness, but other vegetables like snow peas, mushrooms or carrots are excellent as well. It’s just the thing to warm your bones.

REAL ESTATE

Man’s best friend: Your dog doesn’t really need his own shower, but let’s be honest: He’d appreciate it.

Ask Real Estate: The weed shop under their apartment makes too much noise. What can they do about it?

What you get for $500,000: A 1905 three-bedroom farmhouse in Kenoza Lake, N.Y.; a Tudor Revival home in Detroit; or a 1920 Craftsman bungalow in Atlanta.

The hunt: An Academy Award winner wanted a modest place on the Upper East Side with some character for $500,000. Which house did she choose? Play our game.

U-Mall: A writer rented out a 15-foot U-Haul truck and turned it into a trendy vintage goods market.

Hidden gems: Nestled in the mountains of northwestern Italy, a cluster of Catholic sanctuaries brim with Renaissance and Baroque art.

Mental health: Ketamine is an increasingly popular part of therapy for depression and anxiety, but the F.D.A. warns that unsupervised use of the drug can be dangerous.

Moving backward? All six brands owned by the fashion group Kering — including Gucci and Alexander McQueen — are run by white male designers.

ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER

The best time to shop for hiking boots

Trekking through the woods to admire the changing foliage, the crisp leaves crunching underfoot, can be a magical experience. Don’t let a pair of ill-fitting hiking boots ruin it for you. To find boots that actually fit, you should go shopping at the end of the day. That may sound oddly specific, but stick with me: Your feet swell throughout the day, so you’ll want to try on new shoes when they’re at their biggest. That way, your hiking boots won’t ever pinch or squeeze, and you can happily leaf-peep pain free. — Elissa Sanci

No. 8 Oregon vs. No. 7 Washington, college football: The Pac-12 conference, the heart of West Coast football for the past century, is most likely in its final season because many of its teams (including these two) have abandoned it for the Big 10. If this really is the end, it’s going out with a bang. Oregon and Washington are both undefeated. Both have quarterbacks who could win the Heisman. Both offenses are prolific, ranked No. 1 and 2 in the nation in yards per game. The Big 10’s grinding defenses are on the horizon; for now, though, let’s enjoy the fireworks. 3:30 p.m. on ABC.

For more: The Athletic picked the other best games of the weekend, including U.S.C. vs. Notre Dame.

NOW TIME TO PLAY