Sustainability is not enough!

Allbirds, the unofficial sneaker of the long 2010s

I’ve bought a lot of clothes and accessories in my day, and contemplated purchasing more still. One item type I never so much as considered: Allbirds sneakers. If you wear these, I’m not fashion-policing you out of enjoying yourself, we all need something on our feet. They’re so blend-into-the-background that I realize I have no idea if anyone I know wears them. Maybe everyone I know does! Sorry!! But to me, they look like the equivalent, to Skechers [thank you, all who pointed out the lack of “t”], of what a natural-cereal alternative is to Fruit Loops: similar to the thing, but the color was drained from them, in such a way as to indicate that the thing must be good for you.

I don’t covet Skechers and I really don’t want Wholesome Can’t Believe It’s Not Skechers. It is therefore not surprising to me that nobody else wants these, either, and the brand has tanked.

Lloyd Alter laments their demise. He cites their admirable ecological practices and transparency, then writes, “But evidently, sustainability isn’t enough.”

In “Mushroom.”

I have ever so many thoughts about this. The biggest is that no, sustainability is not enough. I shall expand on this thought:

-If you care about sustainability, if this is your biggest priority, you’re not buying the latest in tech-bro eco-shoes. You’re not buying new shoes. You’re wearing out your existing shoes. You’re shopping secondhand. You’re getting shoes made in a self-evident way from natural materials and not ones where you have to research what it means that the Tencel or memory foam of these sneakers is sustainable.

-As tends to be the case with footwear, barring a handful of classics but really even those (don’t see Converse as much as you used to), Allbirds look of a certain moment. A moment not far enough into the past to be revived, but also far enough gone that they look passé even to the less fashion-forward. They’re not ugly enough to be so-bad-it’s-good, or part of an ugly-shoe trend. They’re aggressively inoffensive.

Consider these, the least objectionable I could find:

They’re fine! OK the sole is meh but the upper is inoffensive, or even nice in a felt-y way. If I for some reason already owned them, I might wear them. (Not since getting the silver Mostros though!) But they’re minimalist, in the way of a greige kitchen from 2010. They look like a direct-to-consumer start-up, in shoe form. They’re several sneaker trend cycles behind.

There was possibly a moment when I could imagine someone receiving shoes like this as a gift and being excited to open the box. No more.

If what you’re selling are shoes to be purchased new, then you have to either come up with a design so unique that it withstands trend fluctuations (like Birkenstocks) or you need to come up with new silhouettes for new seasons, following or better yet setting trends. This isn’t the biggest sin; people do in fact need to get new sneakers from time to time, and there’s no law they need to look identical to the previous. Otherwise it’s eat-your-mushrooms.

-These are status symbol shoes for people who are ostentatiously not into fashion. And I don’t see how that survives as a business model. If you care about shoes, you’re getting other shoes. If you don’t care which shoes you wear, once again, you’re not getting these, nor indeed would you have reason to dwell on the sustainability of your every-five-years shoe purchase, singular.