"But, in spite of what marketing initiatives like cocktail parties and a satellite design studio may suggest, he would be the first to say that the Birkenstock is beyond fashion."

"'It’s less painting, it’s less color,' he tells me at one point, 'but it’s more emotion.' I burst out laughing. 'So you’re saying Karl Birkenstock, bitter or not, is right? That it’s not about design?' Reichert smiles and then says with care (or for effect; I can’t tell), 'There’s always a dwarf in the mountain having the biggest diamond. It’s not the nice prince. You need the nice prince to get the diamond out of the mountain and treat it right. But the ugly, mean dwarf in the mountain — he owns the diamond.'"

So ends "The Dwarf, the Prince, and the Diamond in the Mountain/An unlikely fable, in which Birkenstocks become cool and double sales overnight" (New York Magazine)(an article with many more photographs of the making of Birkenstocks than you could possibly imagine).