The Vans Sk8-Hi: A Short History of the Most Iconic Skate Shoe of All Time
And in our opinion, it doesn’t get much more classic than the Vans Sk8-Hi. For nearly twenty years now, we, the cats that put together your favourite magazine with the words ‘Monster’ and ‘Children’ in the title, have been running stories featuring people wearing the Sk8-Hi. That’s right, we’re almost 20. But we’ll get into that next week. Right now, join us as we take a look at the Sk8-Hi’s history.
Sk8-Hi was introduced by the Van Doren Rubber Co. in 1978 and went on become one of the most recognizable and well-loved skate shoes in the history of foot coverings.
In the 1970s, skateboarding was reaching beyond its ‘toy’ status and establishing itself as not just a hobby, but a lifestyle. At the time, Vans was one of the few companies that understood skateboarding and its cultural potential, and in turn they began to design shoes specifically for skateboarders. The skaters of the 70s were hungry for a shoe that would provide them with the necessary grip and support to keep pushing the sport forwards, and the design of the Sk8-Hi answered the call with padded high-top ankle support, a durable canvas and suede upper, and, of course, the Vans patented waffle sole for superior grip. The shoe was also the first to feature Paul Van Doren’s distinctive ‘jazz stripe’ (skit-bop-badda-bing) on its side—an instantly recognizable hallmark of the Vans brand and the Sk8-Hi itself.
Shal
As skateboarding continued to grow in popularity, so did that of the Sk8-Hi, and soon even non-skaters were appreciating the shoe's classic design and its ability to endure the rigors of everyday wear. By the 1980s, the Sk8-Hi was a staple of skate culture, appearing in every skate video and magazine. The BMX came along, and those guys discovered that the shoe was excellent for doing cherry pickers and woopty-doos, or whatever they name their tricks (no idea; we’ve never covered BMX). But the Sk8-Hi’s status as an icon was cemented when the dirty, no-good punks and shoe-gazers of the alternative music scene adopted the shoe. The Sk8-Hi bled out of the core world of skateboarding, into BMX, and then into the counterculture at large.
Fukhed
When the 90s finally rolled around, the Sk8-Hi experienced a boost in popularity when alternative culture were swept up in the whole ‘Grunge’ thing of the 1990s. Around the same time, vert skating got ditched in favour of street skating, and the shoe was embraced by a whole new generation of skaters and even larger generation of non-skaters, who paired the Sk8-hi with ripped jeans, flannelette, long dirty hair, and a cynical outlook (the Grunge people). The shoe's popularity continued to grow throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s. In those days, if you didn’t have a pair of Sk8-Hi’s at the end of your legs.
Rowan Zorilla by Andrew Peters
Today, the Vans Sk8-Hi is more popular than ever, and has been reinterpreted and updated with new colorways, materials, and technologies, but its classic design and Mr Van Doren’s jazz stripe remains unchanged. Almost 50 years on, and the Sk8-Hi is still considered one of, if not THE most iconic skate shoe of all time.
Grosso
This article was created with our friends at
