2006-03-11
Thank You for Insulting Our Sandals
IN "Thank You for Smoking," an acerbic new movie about a tobacco lobbyist, the camera paints a quick but telling portrait of his bane, Senator Ortolan Finistirre, an antismoking environmentalist Democrat from Vermont, played by William H. Macy. A poster of Cheddar cheese hangs on his office wall. Tins of maple syrup crowd his desk. The proof positive of his moral rectitude, however, comes in a cutaway shot of the senator's feet encased in thick white socks and sandals.
They are not just any sandals, but boxy buckled Birkenstocks, the footwear that has become synonymous with a certain type of noodge. ...
It's interesting that the Hollywood folks thought to associate "Birkenstocks" with "Vermont" ... a few years back, I did an informal of footware at UVM and Cornell. Sandalwise, UVM prefered Tevas to Birkenstocks, and Cornell preferred Birkenstocks to Tevas. At both schools, hiking boots, trail shoes, and sneakers, however were more popular than sandals. Now-a-days, I would guess that flip-flops (zori) seem to be the preferred sandal.
Credits: Coeli Carr, Thank you for instulting our sandals, New York Times, March 12, 2006. Photograph: Vance Jacobs for The New York Times, Birkenstock Arizonas.(Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/fashion/sundaystyles/12birkenstock.html)
