Thursday, March 5, 2020

Willy Santos #3.



Moon boots.

It's fascinating how Vans was running a full line of puffy shoes in the late 1990s and early 2000s to keep up with the dominant trend in skateboard footwear. This included pro models in varying degrees of bulky for Willy, Steve Caballero, Alan Petersen, Salman Agah, and John Cardiel. At the same time, they started bringing back the more traditional waffle sole models thanks in part to Geoff Rowley. It almost felt like they had two separate skate teams due to shoe designs and ad layouts. For the financial health of the company, returning to the classic vulcanized designs was probably the best move. Although for the sake of foot health, it maybe wasn't. You do see slightly more padded models popping up in their designs today, which is a more practical compromise.

Note: My scanner occasionally gets funky on two page spreads for some reason resulting in minor color differences between the left and right side of the page, but this one was actually different in print.

The photos are by Scott Pommier.

Slap - July 2001 Volume 10 Number 7

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