“I’ve never in my life felt like a Birkenstock would be something that is almost like a Supreme item where people buy them and then resell it for like five times the amount,” Ms. Hoxsie said. She said she also received her share of critical comments, reporting some for harassment on Mercari, another reselling platform she uses.
“There’s very strong opinions on it. Like, ‘You’re like stealing from the poor,’ ‘You’re taking everything from these thrift shops,” Ms. Hoxsie said, using a fecal expletive, of her work as a reseller. “We’re taking stuff that would go to landfill. But I don’t know. I think people are just mad when they can’t, like, go to the website and buy what they want.”
“Bostons have been trending up a lot recently,” Duncan Cook, a moderator of the Birkenstock subreddit, said. Mr. Cook, 39, is an engineering manager at a software company and lives in Oregon. “There’s been a few posts asking about, you know, ‘When are they going to restock?’ Or, like, ‘They just restocked’ and ‘How do we get more?’”
Mr. Cook is diligent about weeding out fake Bostons, regularly deleting posts from people claiming to have found the clogs on unauthorized websites for much cheaper prices.
Not everyone cares to have the real deal, though. For some, getting the Boston look at a fraction of the price scratches the same itch. Sonali Prabhu, 25, got a pair of dupes — internet speak for a cheaper duplicate of a popular product — from Kohl’s for $50. “I feel like they just all look the same. And most of the outfit inspo that I’m seeing for these Birkenstocks are, like, covered. They’re halfway covered,” Ms. Prabhu, a photographer and influencer in Austin, said. “It’s just like the little like round part in the front that’s showing anyways. So I just thought, you know, it’s not even worth getting it for, like, hundreds of dollars.”
