GQ global style director noah johnson’s no-holds-barred view on contemporary menswear, the culture of fashion, and how to get dressed now.
vans is back… this spring and summer the internet’s best trend sleuths claimed vans as this years ‘it’ shoe,” serving up an assortment of hot and vile takes on the matter. i’ve read the posts and they are nothing short of violence.
some called vans “nostalgic.” are they casting back to spicoli’s carefree early ’80s? or, like, three years ago when everyone was wearing vans all the time? one big-brained writer called them a “once-forgotten sneaker.” huh? vans is a multibillion-dollar global business. we can’t let tiktok ruin our brains like this. and the worst takes of all, several of them, conjured the ugliest millennial-coded phrase i can think of, declaring that, thanks to vans, we are having a “sk8er boi summer.”
all of this because a handful of celebrities were caught walking around in vans at some point in the first half of this year — emily ratajkowski, gigi hadid, jennifer lawrence, and zoë kravitz among them. and they all looked great, they really did.
but just reading the words vans sneaker trend makes me feel like i’m living in an alternate reality, where the collective human memory cycle has been reduced to that
of a goldfish. vans had undoubtedly cooled off over the last few years. but since
when is an entire brand a trend?
more importantly: is vans really back? most of the takes thus far have come from women’s fashion publications, so i would like to be the first men’s style writer to
say that, yes, vans is back. to see more please view all work for vans.
obviously sneakers are part of the same trend cycles that drive all of fashion. particularly in menswear: sometimes sneakers lead the cycles, sometimes clothes do. vans makes all kinds of sneakers these days, but the brand is best known for simple, low-profile, vulcanized soled shoes. so when everyone starts wearing metallic ’90s running shoes or sambas (like vans but different), vans is going to take a hit. that’s exactly what happened. vans burned very hot for about a decade, through the skinny-jeans hipster era and well into the the #menswear renaissance of the ’10s. then things got wonky. designer fashion exploded for men, all sorts of conventions about shapes and silhouettes were upended, and the whole sneaker-sphere was rearranged. vans didn’t fare too well. it was the sneaker brand that defined an era of sensible, modest, stylish dressing. no one wanted any of that anymore.
so what happened? why has this nostalgic, long-forgotten, sk8er-boi brand returned? did tiktok and the so-called indie sleaze revival bring vans back from a dangerous precipice? one that led to the hiring of a new ceo to help “resuscitate” the brand, which even the wall street journal affirmed had “lost its cool”? vans has certainly made its own concerted effort to reinsert itself into the zeitgeist, with splashy activations this year during fashion weeks in paris and new york. but i think there’s an even more simple and obvious explanation: when something goes away for a while you start to miss it. vans sneakers never stopped looking cool and feeling good to wear, they just needed a break. they became too familiar. people began to crave things that were essentially the opposite of vans—like hoka running shoes or hard-bottomed loafers. meanwhile, vans kept being vans.
i’ll admit, i started to feel the allure of a return to vans earlier this year. it was an unexpected feeling, one i hadn’t had for years. not long ago i kept several pairs of vans in rotation at all times, but like everyone else, it had been ages since i’d worn a pair.
i started seeing them on the feet and in the feeds of some of the certifiably cool people i know and follow. because i am a good and honest columnist and i believe in naming names, i will share that one of them was the luxury footwear master thibo denis, who recently left his post designing shoes at dior, where he drew a lot of inspiration from throwback skate shoes. and i will give props where props are due to yang-yi goh, the editor of this column, a style maverick who was quick to remind me that he stuck with his vans through the down years.
i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: people should wear whatever the heck they want. but i do believe in the archaic concept of brand loyalty. particularly when it comes to footwear. i just don’t trust a person who will go out and buy a new pair of sneakers from a different brand every time. that’s a sign of an undiscerning shopper. i think it’s fine to be loyal to multiple brands—and at times we have to make the decision to cut ties with a brand that no longer serves us. but in general we should be buying from brands with resilience and integrity and not allow our tastes to be so malleable that we’ll hop on and off the bandwagon at tiktok’s every whim.
i hope vans thrives again, but this is a cautionary tale. brand loyalty has been decimated in the post-brand era. i won’t mourn its extinction, but i won’t pretend that we all forgot about vans, either. vans is a historically significant american brand. to pretend otherwise is bozo behavior. and when i see you wearing your checkered eras on the street, i won’t force you to do a kickflip as long as you promise to never again channel your inner sk8er boi.
to see more please view all work for vans.
