VANS - off the wall

[ a complete version of this article/interview you'll find exclusive in the printed issue 3 / 06 of stw2d! ]

A simple shoe, as a vehicle of a lose lifestyle that moved its way through all shapes of counter culture. For forty years now, the Southern Californian label finds approval and popularity that elude themselves from any trends, hype revivals or explanations. Independent from a specific target group, at any time, Vans is a symbol character in identity founding cultures, a pop cultural phenomenon and an icon of different youth cultures. From the beaches and streets of Southern California the wave of a Vans fascination splashed all over the planet. Until the mid 70ss, the soft rubber soles were the favourite choice of skaters and surfers in the Golden State, in the following decade the typical shape of the shoe became an identification badge among skateboarders in the States and Europe, a short look at the shoes offers an immediate topic for a conversation, enough to get to know each other or even become friends, no matter if you were on your way with or without a skateboard. In Europe, there weren’t that many skaters at the time and skateboard shoes were only worn by insiders. Over the musical preferences Vans also moved into the clubs. There were hardly any hardcore or punk rock shows where you wouldn’t find the stage divers jumping in their Vans or losing them in the moshpit. Even vegan straight edgers didn’t have to worry about walking around in socks; the rubber/canvas material matched their political agenda. BMX-bikes were pushed in colourful Vans, either on the racetrack, dirt jumping or flatland. Even mountain bikers, surfers, snowboarders and breakers later on could follow their activities in Vans Footwear. Slackers on the other side could apply the comfortable shoe for an optimum of any of their activities. Any new band with the pre-fix ‘The’, even in this century, picked up what the older ‘The- Combos’ had stopped twenty years ago. From O.C. California through Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Downtown Berlin to Shibuya leads the way of these descent sneaks from the van Doren Family – and always back too. Following waves or turning back unexpectedly, and never forgotten; Vans has the undisputable status of a classic.

In 1966 the Vans story started with a simple idea; to make shoes and sell them directly to the public with no middleman involved. Paul van Doren and his partners moved to Southern California and opened their first store/factory in Anaheim with just three styles, only as display models. Customers could pick a style and choose a color variation; the shoes then would be produced in the factory in the back and could be picked up later that day. The funny thing is, however, that in the maledominated business of skateboarding, Vans started out with producing girls’ shoes, as Paul’s son and Vans’ co-founder Steve van Doren recounts:

Before the mid 70s it was always girls, in the States we have high schools and we have cheerleaders. For every high school in the area we made shoes for the girls. The second shoe we came up with was navy blue and gold maybe. We had navy blue, light blue navy blue, then black. After that the custom shoes for boys came out. In retrospect, this was the beginning of a big thing. The shoes were customized; colors could be picked individually, and were produced according to the flavour of the customer. The individual idea and a sense of personal style were determent; the Vans idea embodied a thought of individualism. Looking at the course streetwear took from the 90s on, individualism became a fundament of the culture and sure came a long way. In the early Vans days, this was probably more of a natural thing, somehow with a traditional shoemaker flair to it, but the idea in that way was new and in some way seemed to have sensed the spirit of a future zeitgeist. You can consider Vans a trend designer of individualism in streetculture.

Because of the direct addressing to customer requests, an innumerable amount of colour combinations were fabricated. The first shoe shapes did not really change over the decades. Also the waffle sole, a product referring trademark, was there from the very beginning, and only slightly modified by stabilizing it with vertical lines. Ever since, all of Vans’ popularity is based on that sole. The first Vans skateboard shoe designed by Stacy Peralta and Tony Alva was based
on the same concept:
Following the very first styles we came out with the first old school model; that was the style #36. The low top. This was in ‘77, and this one really was developed for skating, it had a leather toe, leather heel and a reinforced area on the outside of the shoe and the stripe. I’m still trying to find out where the stripe came from. I know my dad sat on his desk a lot, he was drawing always. They had the Nike Swoosh at the time, they had the Adidas stripes, and my dad was doodling, and I think my dad basically came up with that stripe by doodling! We actually called that shoe the ‘jazz shoe’ like the music.

With the high top style #37 and later on the style #38, Vans had built the first skateboard shoes period, and with the shoe today known as the Sk8-Hi, or Old Skool style #38 manifested a long lasting pre-eminence in skate shoes. But it was a different model that positioned Vans in pop culture lastingly. In 1982, Sean Penn appeared in the high school comedy ‘Fast Times of Richmond High’ as the awesome surfer-dude Jeff Spicoli in black and white checkered Slip-Ons. Rapidly the shoe became America’s favourite Vans, and consequently also in Europe and Asia. Well-known BMX-pros like Eddie Fiola increased their popularity and colour contrasts. In its best days, the shoes were glaring-colourful, louder than Miami Vice. Steve explains why.

In the very early 80s the checkerboard had just come on the market. The way the checkerboard was coming out was by watching what kids were doing, taking a pen drawing a line in the middle of the white rubber, and then coloring checks on the rubber. Let’s take that and put it on fabric and so we did. And then we knew a lady Kevin Liner came to me and said I got this music tour, and I need a place to run a skate competition, I want this tour to go through fifty states, he had music, I had ramps for just skate competitions on street and vert, we named it the Vans Warped Tour, which was the beginning of the era of being a marketing company. It was three different types of bases and so I decided to do this. Skating, snowboarding, BMX, freestyle motocross, and for the next eight years we did eighteen to twentyone events, all over the country. This kind of marketing led us to the skatepark idea.
Oh well, it was a big idea and I am so happy we did it.

[ a complete version of this article/interview you'll find exclusive in the printed issue 3 / 06 of stw2d! ]