Steve Caballero on the Story of the Vans Half Cab
gennaio 27th, 2012, 14:44 | Posted in: Action Sports, Footwear
In anticipazione dell’attesissima collezione che celebra il 20esimo anniversario della Half-Cab, Steve Caballero racconta in dettaglio la storia dietro a questa grande scarpa.
[...] I don’t know when the first time I saw someone who had cut them down, but I know it was a trend going around — this was when vert skating was kind of dying, street skating was kind of coming up, and people were wearing my shoe because that was the only signature shoe on the market. That shoe came out in 1989, but the Half Cab wasn’t released until three years later. A lot of the street skaters were wearing the original shoe, and I guess they wanted a lower feel to the shoe, so they started cutting the shoe in half, and putting duct tape around it, and stickers. And then I saw that and started doing it myself. [...]
Una breve ma succosa intervista a Complex, con queste due immagini d’archivio che mostrano le primissime versioni della scarpa che, come anticipato, verranno riproposte nel corso dei prossimi mesi attraverso una serie di edizioni limitate.
In attesa di ulteriori sviluppi, leggetevi qua sotto il racconto del Cab sulla nascita della sua iconica signature-shoe .
So start at the beginning — how did the first Caballero come about?
Actually, I got sponsored by Vans in 1988, early ’88. At that time, in between 1985 to about ’87, we were wearing shoes other than Vans, just because Vans wasn’t really supporting skateboarding at that time. They were kind of more focused on BMX and breakdancing. So we ventured out, tried other shoes. I rode Converse for a while, I rode Nike Air Jordans, Puma Prowlers. I even tried the first Airwalks when Airwalk started in ’87. And then I think Vans just got a boost about wanting to get back in the sport and support skateboarding, so they — I’d never been paid from a shoe company before. So they approached me and said, hey, we want you to ride for Vans and we want to pay you. I’m like, well, that’s something new. Sure! They told me how much they wanted to pay me, and I said sure, that’s cool, and they said ‘we also want to give you a signature shoe as well.’ Once I got wind of that I started jotting some stuff down on paper, kind of basing it off the 138 I used to wear all the time and adding my own flavor to it. I brought some drawings in, and they showed me something they were working on as well – it had some aspects that were similar to what my drawing was, so I kind of went with what they had presented me. They made a couple changes. They said they wanted to add some texture that made it look like a dragon, some reptile texture to the side, they had come up with a logo that was a dragon with the tail shaped like a C and my name across, kind of something to tie in with my old board graphics. And we just went with that, because we picked the black and grey and they did a few more colors after that, one was red and grey, and then at the end a purple and grey as well.
And later skaters started cutting them down?
I don’t know when the first time I saw someone who had cut them down, but I know it was a trend going around — this was when vert skating was kind of dying, street skating was kind of coming up, and people were wearing my shoe because that was the only signature shoe on the market. That shoe came out in 1989, but the Half Cab wasn’t released until three years later. A lot of the street skaters were wearing the original shoe, and I guess they wanted a lower feel to the shoe, so they started cutting the shoe in half, and putting duct tape around it, and stickers. And then I saw that and started doing it myself. I think a couple pairs I tried to sew like that. Then eventually I got tired and I was like instead of cutting these things down, why don’t we make them like this? So I brought the idea to Vans, and I said hey, you know, I see a trend going on with the shoe — the shoe’s been out for three years already, why don’t we come up with a new shoe and call it the Half Cab and cut it down and come up with new colors? They liked that idea, so I told them I wanted come up with a new logo for the side, so I grabbed a picture of me doing a half Cab and they made a silhouette of it and put “Half Cab” on the side and that’s how the label came about. It just went from there. That’s how that evolved.
I’m pretty sure the high top was still around. And what was cool how that all flowed together was that the “half Cab” was a skateboard trick as well, so it just kind of flowed — like, if we do this, we should just call it Half Cab.
[...]
Continua a leggere l’intervista qui, su Complex.
