Piet Parra Is Fine With People Flipping His Exquisite Vans (EXCLUSIVE)
When redesigning Vans' Half Cab sneaker, skater-turned-artist Piet Parra set himself a simple challenge. "[I wanted to make you do] a double take – seeing a familiar face but you have to double check," he tells Highsnobiety.
Mission accomplished, I'd say. Parra's Vans OTW Half Cab shoe collab is arguably the most sumptuous version of the classic skate shoe ever designed, though it's also recognizable once you get up close.
"I wanted to make sure I didn't mess it up," Parra explains, describing the Half Cab's DIY forefather as "super sick." This is a shoe that's long been near and dear to the Dutch pro's heart, so his aim was to do it justice while also pushing the envelope.
"We went through a fair share of samples to tweak the panels so it would strike a balance we were all happy with. The hardest part was the top view — a slightly little rounded divot in the toe cap panel made it look like a different shoe."
Indeed, from a distance, Parra's artful Half Cab appears to be a whole new beast.
Its soft suede panels have been warped into wavy sections that divide up the mid-top sneaker into a real-world rendition of Parra's abstract canvases, down to his signature warm color palette.
But this is still a shoe to be skated, a point hammered home by action shots of Vans team member Curren Caples shredding the Parra Half Cab — who also stars in the BAN THIS-inspired campaign video — and the collaborative sneaker's illustrative insole: "DON'T FORGET TO SKATE IN THESE!"
What with the messaging and the painterly hues that inform his debut Vans OTW collab, you may think Parra is opposed to the whole sneaker resale business. The practice does, after all, foster a proposition akin to the art market: What good is creativity if it's in service of crude capital?
Parra is more open-minded than it sounds, however.
"To be honest, I really love the flipping, collecting and reselling of shoes," he explains. "In my humble opinion, it is part of sneaker culture and it allows for the collectors themselves to decide what will become a grail and not the manufacturers."
And, to his point, not every shoe is an obvious flip. More than being merely limited, a sneaker "needs to be a dope shoe to have that effect."
So, if you garb Piet Parra's Vans OTW Half Cab from the OTW web store on September 24 for $135 and feel like spinning it for some quick cash, go in peace: You have the artist's blessing.
But wouldn't you rather rock these beauties?
