This Vans-Obsessed Photographer Rescued a Forgotten Sneaker (EXCLUSIVE)
Some people love Vans but Julian Klincewicz really loves Vans. The artist and director may be best known for his work with luxury labels like CELINE and Gucci but though you can take the boy outta San Diego, you can't take the San Diego out of the boy.
"In a lot of ways my experience of growing up in Southern California was on some level shaped by Vans," Klincewicz tells Highsnobiety. "Skate shoes, Warped Tour, combi bowl, checkerboard patterns. It just makes sense. As a kid I wanted to be a shoe designer — so to do collections with Vans has been a literal dream come true."
Klincewicz has been creating supremely wearable Vans sneakers since the days of Vans Vault, the top-tier line that's given way to OTW, Vans' current imprint for high-end sneakers and big-time partnerships. But Klincewicz is a Vans enjoyer in the truest sense of the word. It's not enough to create drops for the public — he's just designing sneakers for himself.
"Vans and I have actually been working on this amazing project for my studio where we’ve made a bunch of one-of-one pairs of the 31s in different colorways that correspond to projects I’m working on," Klincewicz says. New book? New pair of Vans. Exhibit in the works? Bespoke Vans incoming. "The bespoke nature of that project is really a template for how brands can collaborate with artists in a way that looks at the shoe as a medium for artwork. It’s sort of an R&D collaboration that leans more into the art side than the commerce side."
It's very possible that there isn't any other artist in the world who gets Vans better than Klincewicz. Little wonder the collaborations he does make for the public are so good.
His newest offering includes the Style 31, an undersung retro sneaker that's mostly vanished from the Vans lineup but reappears in his Vans' partnerships.
It's a forgotten classic, a sleek sneak out of time. In Klincewicz' own words, his goal was to evoke the feel of growing up in Southern California, where skate shoes were just part of the daily rotation, their colors more classic and shapes less streamlined. His vision of the Style 31 is as it was way back when, manifesting in small tweaks instead of major overhauls. "This usually comes down to just playing with colors and materials that help convey the world I'm exploring," he explains.
As a result, the Old Skool 36 and Style 31 that're releasing alongside a throwback clothing capsule on Vans OTW's website feel like uncovered archival pulls seeing the light of day for the first time in years. They even come with a lived-in look, evoking the comfortable softness of a trip down memory lane.
You've worked on the Style 31 before. What's the appeal of that shape, especially in comparison to a similar style like, say, the Lampin?
I love the Lampin and the paneling on that shoe would be so fun to work with but it's a bit more padded or puffed up than the 31 and I love a floppy shoe.
It’s the feel, but also that the 31 is this sort of secret gem in the Vans archive. When I found it I couldn’t believe it wasn’t in regular production 'cause it feels like exactly what I want from Vans: a simple classic shoe, but also somehow new. There’s also a kind of ubiquity to the 31 that's sneaky and underrated. I could happily just do a different color in that shoe with Vans and be stoked… and that’s sort of the goal, to make this very subtle Vans shoe a classic that people think about in the same way they do the Authentic or the Slip-On. It’s on that same tier, except it’s been forgotten about for decades.
How do you choose the colors, panel placement, and materials?
For this collection I was directly inspired by my first impressions of moving to San Diego: the skate and beach culture, the music… So I drew on early 2000’s San Diego for color inspiration and materials, like long days at the skate park, or the boredom and freedom of Southern California.
There’s a few details I really love. The first is the heel scab: we developed this multi-layered version so that as it wears out it changes color. It’s a minor detail, but a really cool one I’d never seen done before, and I think it is a fun pay-off for wearing the shoes out.
The other is just doing the Style31 silhouette. It’s a very low-key Vans shoe but a personal favorite, and one I’m really trying to emphasize in my longer term partnership with OTW.
You describe your 31 as looking "worn-out." What's the appeal of that look, why is it everywhere in fashion right now, and why does it look so good?
You know, I think there are a few reasons. The simplest answer would be that the past holds a romance to it, one that sparks the imagination in a beautiful way. You get to fantasize and participate in the story of something. It’s a visceral form of storytelling. The worn-out look is also a shorthand for something more meaningful than a product. It implies lived experience, which in turn implies some kind of reality and stability, and that's grounding in such an unstable world.
Personally, I think there’s also something to do with the intangibility of the present. So much of life is in the digital world with endless updates and changes, ones that often don’t actually enhance our experience of the thing but rather further disorient us into a perpetual state of “Damn, I preferred the old version.” Worn-in marks feel real and tangible. They can't be taken away from us. It's like, "I made that rip in my jeans doing this," "I tore my shoelace doing 50 kick-flips," My shirt got faded from a summer at the beach." These are real marks of real experiences, so to build them into a garment gives you a connection to something real. At best it can inspire or remind you to go create those experiences.
I wanted certain elements of this collection to have a worn-in feeling because it helped tell this story of early 2000s San Diego. It adds to the fantasy of it but also captures something about the reality of my lived experience at that time. There’s a romance and personal power to wearing things until they’re completely worn out. The objects become imbued with a meaning beyond what they are and that’s what’s interesting for me.
I will say, though: in the process of looking backwards on the last two collections, I’m very excited to explore the present in my next Vans collection.
