Sturdy and high off the ground, with great arch support and not a lot of give, they are especially popular among those who perform emotional labor such as nurses and flight attendants: work that skews disproportionately female and involves a lot of standing. It was unsurprising to see so many pairs shuffling along Fifth Avenue at January’s Women’s March on Washington in New York City, literally supporting the chanting and sign-wielding.

Headquartered in Chester County, a rural and horsy part of Pennsylvania, about an hour’s drive west of Philadelphia, Dansko was founded in 1990 by Peter Kjellerup and Mandy Cabot, a pair of married ex-dressage trainers. The company is now completely employee-owned. The buildings are LEED-certified, tranquilly designed and staffed by 155 people, all wearing clogs. There are solar panels and a rooftop garden, stone-colored furniture and an expansive on-site kitchen. At the building’s main entrance, a sculpture inspired by Copenhagen’s famous “Little Mermaid” bronze statue sits in an outdoor fountain. Going there was like walking into an American’s fantasy of Scandinavia — a superlative quality-of-life index made real.

Cabot and Kjellerup look like people you might see on a hiking trail or knee-deep in corral mud. They spent the first decade of their marriage running an 80-acre farm and traveling back and forth to Europe, buying and selling horses. It was on a work-related trip to Denmark one winter in the late ’80s that Cabot, at her husband’s urging, borrowed a pair of traditional wooden-soled Danish clogs, “the kind any self-respecting farmer there owns,” which have closed backs. “They were unbelievable,” Cabot recalled. Despite being loose and unlined, they allowed air to circulate, keeping her feet warm. Later on that same trip, they encountered this style of clogs, again, but with polyurethane rather than wooden soles. These, they thought, were even better: the ideal barn shoes, great for mucking about, easy to get on and off.

With the proceeds from the sale of a foal, Cabot and Kjellerup bought their first order of polyurethane-bottomed clogs. They began importing them in small quantities and selling them out of the back of their station wagon at horse shows. The clogs soon gained a cult status among riders, who raved about the shoes’ comfort, warmth and support.

When I told Cabot and Kjellerup that almost everyone I know in New York wears Dansko clogs, even the most stylish and constitutionally avant-garde, they didn’t seem particularly impressed, or surprised. But no fashion company has ever approached them to do a collaboration, which astonishes me. Though I’ll always be loyal to the plain black leather model, it’s undeniable that they’d look great done up in a tomato red, Supreme logo printed across the vamps. It’s almost impossible to believe Opening Ceremony hasn’t tried to release limited-edition Dansko clogs in some absurdist material like pink fur.