Vans Old Skool 'Beech'
Colorway: Beech/True White · Style code: VN0A4BV5V7D · Price: $97 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Vans Old Skool 'Corduroy - Primary' (VN0A4BV500Y) · Vans Old Skool J.Crew Corduroy Sneakers (VN0A4BV501J) · Vans Old Skool 'What The Buffalo - Multi-Color' (VN0A4BV503I) · Zhao x Vans Old Skool 'Year of the Rat' (VN0A4BV506G) · Vans Old Skool 'Mix & Match - Grape Juice Bright Marigold' (VN0A4BV516V)
Naming a colour after a wood tells you roughly where it sits: warm, light and closer to bare timber than to chocolate. Beech covers the panels of this pair without a second tone, and the effect is unusual on a shape most people picture in black or in check, because a mid-brown upper pushes the shoe toward something you would wear with tailoring rather than with shorts.
True White handles the leather stripe, the laces and the tape edging the sole, keeping the brown from reading as heavy. The pair was priced at $60, the general-release figure for the model. Construction is the usual set, with a cushioned collar, a doubled-up toe, eyelets ringed in metal and the waffle bottom every pair in the line shares. Warm neutrals like this one are the quietest colourways in the whole range, and they are usually the ones still in rotation two years later when the season's brights have been retired.