Palace's Vans Collab Is Outrageously Ordinary
Palace’s new Vans sneakers are pretty great. No surprise there then.
However, the pair’s latest collaboration isn’t special because Palace made Vans’ Skate Authentic sneakers its own, like a traditional collaboration in the sense of the word, but because, well, it didn’t. Hear me out.
At a glance, Palace’s collaborative Vans Skate Authentic sneakers look pound-for-pound identical to the brand’s inline Skate Authentic, a style of shoe that first became popular during the California skate scene in the 1970s.
With its lightweight yet durable canvas uppers and sticky rubber soles that provide the perfect grip needed to ride a skateboard, Vans’ Skate Authentic has proven to be the perfect summer skate sneaker and has remained one of the brand’s most popular silhouettes since.
Anyways, teaming up for its latest collaboration, Palace takes on Vans’ Authentic once more. But unlike its 2022 link up, where the London-based label playfully plastered its rubber duck motif all over the skate shoe, this time it’s kept things a lot simpler.
In fact, Palace has kept things so simple that it’s changed nothing aside from employing a Palace logo at the heel.
Arriving in three colorways — blue, black, and white — Palace’s Vans collaboration lands online and in-store on May 3.
Sure, collaborations nowadays tend to see two brand’s amalgamate their designs to create one Frankenstein'd concoction that would otherwise never have come to fruition.
Yet, the fact that Palace has changed next to nothing with Vans’ Skate Authentic for its latest collaboration is actually okay. Because, as the ol’ saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
