Danielle Frankel Hirsch spends her days thinking about the weight of responsibility she carries on behalf of her brides. Not to ensure they feel their very best on their big days (they do in her exquisite pieces), but to guarantee that when future generations look back on family wedding pictures, her work is an accurate representation of bridalwear in 2026. “What are we doing today to mark what bridal will look like in the future?” she muses over Zoom, while holed up at home in New York on a snow day.
It’s a big question and one she answers in her new Birkenstock collaboration. Born out of a lifelong love of the brand and as a response to the rising wedding trend for brides to be “a bit more undone,” and like a “true version” of themselves, the six-piece edit is perhaps the ultimate hack for ensuring dancefloor longevity while looking effortlessly put-together. There’s the usual Arizona, Madrid, and Boston models, except they’re almost unrecognizable, decorated with pearls, chiffon blooms, and, in some cases, hand-painted details executed in the south of France, which can be customized to suit their wearer. In an era during which a new collab still lands in our inbox every five minutes, this one is kind of genius.
“Brides and grooms are taking ownership and searching for realness,” says Frankel Hirsch, who presented Birkenstock with some 100 sketches all touching on her customers’ desire to look slightly “unravelled while still super elevated.” When the cork-latex footbed connoisseurs saw her romantic, artisanal spins on their practical sandals, they were speechless. Frankel Hirsch recalls instant chemistry between the two makers: “We’re catering for the same woman, but she’s never wearing the pieces at the same time. To merge them together is a fun concept.”
The campaign introduces another element into the mix: couture. Frankel Hirsch flew her family to Paris for two weeks to shoot a salon-style campaign, inspired by wedding photos from the ’50s and ’60s, in order to spark joy: “It’s so hard to capture an audience for more than a moment, I really wanted people to feel enveloped in the photos,” she says of executing the pictures with the same precision as, say, a Danielle Frankel bride might plan her wedding.
Frankel Hirsch’s young family have been with her every step of the way. When Danielle and her husband Josh Hirsch, who is CEO of the brand, first visited Birkenstock’s German factory (all potential collaborators are invited to learn how to build the shoes before they try and redesign them), it was the last week she was allowed to fly before giving birth to her son. Now, he’s almost three. This throughline is at the heart of the collection, which Frankel Hirsch hopes customers will continue to wear long past their celebrations. Birkenstocks look best when loved and lived in, right?
