With Song For The Mute and Birkenstock 1774, a full-circle collaboration reframes footwear through four distinct archetypes.
After another long day at the Song For The Mute studio, Brand Director Melvin Tanaya logs on from Sydney – it’s 8PM, and he’s yet to find time for his first meal. Still, there’s a flicker of energy every time the brand’s collaboration with Birkenstock 1774 comes up, a kind of sustained excitement that comes from something long in the making. Alongside his co-founder, Creative Director and partner in crime Lyna Ty, this is a body of work that has been lived with.
Hailing from Australia, SFTM have built their reputation as masters of storytelling. Tanaya and Ty translate their own personal experiences into tales of their design language, through fabric selection and manipulation, producing collections in the form of chapters that aesthetically evolve from the last to contribute to the longstanding narrative of the brand.
“Birkenstock has always been a bit of a ‘holy grail’ brand for us,” Tanaya admits. “Back in 2011, when we won National Designer of the Year in Australia, we styled all our looks with Birkenstock and we styled our lookbooks with Birkenstock over the years. It got to a point where Dover Street Market was even asking, ‘Are you selling those Birkenstocks?’ And we were like, no – they’re just creations, things we’ve modified ourselves.”
Courtesy of Birkenstock 1774
If the collaboration feels inevitable, it is because it was. Not just in securing it, but also in the process of it coming to life. Three years, to be exact. Tanaya pulls up the original pitch deck, sent to the Birkenstock 1774 team ahead of their first meeting back in 2023. The vision and concept were clear from the get-go, sitting only a couple of steps away from what we eventually ended up getting all this time later.
“Knowing that Birkenstock has such a strong legacy, we decided to draw inspiration from their very first campaign,” Ty tells me via email. “It transcended age and gender, showing different kinds of people wearing it; postmen, chefs, intellectuals and even kids. So that is where we started with the direction of the campaign, by forming distinct characters that could live in the world of our Birkenstock 1774 and Song For The Mute collaboration.”
The result was a quartet of archetypes: The Artist, The Rebel, The Gardener and The Collector – all with their own corresponding Birkenstock 1774 silhouette along with accompanying clothing and objects. “We felt that most people had a character to gravitate towards,” Ty explains. “If you like the outdoors – The Gardener, if you’re creative – The Artist, if you like to curate and archive – The Collector, and if you don’t conform to any of those – The Rebel.”
The silhouettes in question – the Super Birki 2.0, London, Amsterdam and Paris – are recontextualised through SFTM’s signature material manipulation and an exclusive, co-branded rivet (a first for the German footwear brand’s 250-year history).
As you’d expect, The Artist’s London silhouette features paint splatters all over the taupe suede upper for a lived-in, studio-used look. The Rebel (originally donned the Pet Lover in the early stages) goes for the Mary Jane-esque Paris silhouette in black pony hair. Perfect for the landscapers of the world, The Gardener takes on the newly reimagined Super Birki 2.0 with a tan rubber construction and a fairly fitting grass print in the shoe’s guts. And The Collector ties it all together with the Amsterdam, featuring a polished all-black leather and a simple, streamlined shape that oozes class and a maturity that prioritises elegance.
Beyond footwear, the accompaniments come in the form of the aforementioned objects and jumpsuits – something that initially worried Tanaya when Ty brought the idea forward after they were offered the opportunity to tap into Birkenstock’s ready-to-wear. “How am I going to pitch that to Klaus [from the Birkenstock team]? But [Lyna’s] idea was that each character would have a jumpsuit – something rooted in workwear, something functional, but also tied to their identity and narrative. And when I presented this, he was like, ‘That’s exactly why we chose you guys, because you understand that this is a brand moment – it really enriches the Birkenstock heritage,’” said Tanaya.
“I think it’s our favourite project we’ve ever done,” Tanaya admits. And, to be honest, it shows. Three years is a long time, but after finally seeing the fruits of their labour, it makes complete sense. It’s a collaboration that fully realises the heart and soul of both brands for a marriage that feels like it holds the weight and style of both sides equally. From the collaborative footwear to the created archetypes to even the world built around the campaign, it feels like a satisfying full-circle moment for Tanaya and Ty, who started their fashion journeys with Birkenstock on their models’ feet in their first collection. To be able to put forward this narrative to the world really shows how far the brand has come in its 16-year history, only confirming Tanaya’s mission statement: “We don’t really see ourselves as product designers, we see ourselves as storytellers.”
The collection is available online now.
