Adidas Sambas are dead! This former Prime Minister killed them! Wait no, long live Adidas Sambas! Hmm… but what about these French-girl alternatives? Or these Japanese ones? And have you even considered these five other trainer styles that might supersede everything else ? The race to define the so-called shoe of the season is one that I have entered into on several occasions, to sometimes – I am noble enough to admit – questionable ends.
And yet, in and amongst this desperate reporting, a silent pretender has emerged in the form of Vans’s slip-ons. I have seen those classic chequerboards bubbling up through the streets of London and Paris, and on famous people like EmRata, Jennifer Lawrence, Olivia Rodrigo and Gigi Hadid, who was yesterday afternoon strolling through New York in a pair of her own black-and-pewter check babies. She wore them with a beaded midi-dress from Bode, a Rebalance trucker hat and a charm-strewn Miu Miu Arcadie bag while enjoying a hundreds-and-thousands-strewn ice cream.
It’s a style that makes sense for Gigi, but culture is also primed for a broader Vans resurgence more generally. It is a shoe synonymous with youth, nostalgia and subculture, specific enough to determine skaters, SoundCloud rappers and indie sleazers, and yet broad enough for anyone to project their own coming-of-age fantasies. “Owning a pair of slip-on Vans feels just as much a right of passage as wiping out on a surfboard,” said American Vogue’s Hannah Jackson, who grew up in California. “While I’ve proudly owned other sneakers of the moment – and worn them into the ground – none have the longevity of the humble canvas slip-ons.”
