Whose Grandma Made Vans’ Floral Skate Shoe?
The Vans Authentic skate shoe can be luxury. Mattias Gollin’s $750 bejeweled footwear and Dior’s lookalike sneakers recently proved that the skate shoe’s low profile is inherently stylish. But can the Authentic itself ascend to the throne? Vans says yes.
The Californian footwear label’s Premium line is turning this quintessential skate shoe, typically built from hard-wearing shred-ready canvas, into something artful, delicate, and floral.
The new sneaker wears a translucent off-white jacquard base woven with multicolored flowers. It’s the kind of composition you’d expect on a knitted blanket or something your Granny crocheted. And it gives this punkish sneaker some serious flower power.
Flora even obscures the laces in the form of a handwoven wooden bead lace charm, the kind of handmade trinket that would feel at home at a farmers market stall and would probably get in the way if anyone tried to actually skate in the shoe.
But this isn’t a shoe for shredding.
This new Vans Premium Authentic, releasing April 2 for $110, follows a long line of pretty experiments.
There’s the skate brand’s rustic new knitted sneaker, for example, as well as skate shoes turned dapper brogues and several Chanel-inspired tweed numbers that instantly sold out at the end of last year. Vans has always been more than just its famed skater footwear, but it's really taking the artfulness of its shoes up a gear.
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