Vans WTAPS x OG Era LX 'White Red'
Colorway: White/Red · Style code: VN000OZDGWD · Release date: April 29, 2017 · Price: $531 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: WTAPS x Vans OG Era LX 'White Blue' (VN000OZDGW9) · Vans WTAPS x OG Era LX 'Anaconda' (VN000OZDKBQ) · WTAPS x Vans OG Era LX 'Anaconda Blue' (VN000OZDKBV) · WTAPS x Vans OG Era LX 'Anaconda' (VN000OZDKBW) · Club 75 x Vans Era LX 'Locals Only' (VN000OZDKNR)
Most long-running collaborations drift toward reinvention. The WTAPS and Vault by Vans partnership has gone the other way, and that is the reason it has lasted.
WTAPS is the label Tetsu Nishiyama founded in Tokyo, built on military and workwear sourcing and on a habit of reproducing garments accurately before altering them. Applied to footwear, that approach means the OG models (the Era, the Sk8-Hi, the Old Skool, the Chukka, the Half Cab) arrive in their original forms rather than as redesigns. What changes is the material and the graphic: premium suede in place of canvas, a leather side stripe, embossed hides, and recurring motifs such as the crossbones and the anaconda pattern.
By 2022 the two had put out more than fifteen collections together, which for a collaboration begun in the 2010s is unusual persistence.
This pair is an OG Era LX, the padded-collar low-top catalogued by Vans as Style 95 and shaped in 1976 with input from Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta, finished in white with red.