Vans published the second chapter of Act of Disagreement with Slam Jam on September 11, a twelve piece collection with exactly one shoe in it. That shoe is the LX Classic Slip-On 98, and it does something to the checkerboard that Vans almost never allows. One quarter panel runs red and white. The rest runs black and white. The foxing underneath has been printed to look like it already survived a winter it did not enjoy.
The Slip-On arrived in 1977 as Style #98, a number that was internal bookkeeping long before it was a badge. The checkerboard was not a Vans idea to start with. It came off kids drawing squares onto the white rubber foxing of their own pairs, and Vans moved the pattern up onto the canvas once it was obvious the customers had already decided. Sean Penn wearing a black and white pair in Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982 settled the association permanently, and it has never come loose since.
The 98 in the name has come back on the premium end of the line, where the LX designation signals a heavier build and a closer read of the original spec than the $60 checkerboard sitting on the main Vans site. That distinction matters for a shoe this simple. There is no cushioning story to tell and no upper technology to explain, so the only levers are the canvas, the foxing and what gets printed on both.
This version pulls all three. The upper is canvas with the two checkerboards set against each other rather than repeating, and the whole shoe has been given a distressed treatment so the print reads as worn rather than new. A grainy photographic print runs across the sidewall and bleeds up over the foxing stripe. The collar is trimmed in a pale fleece that sits oddly and deliberately against the checks. A woven label reading Act of Disagreement wraps around the Vans tab on the quarter panel, and the word Disagreement is set into the outsole tread in red, which is the detail that will show up in every photo taken from underneath. Inside is a custom drop in sockliner. Slam Jam lists the build as one hundred percent textile, made in the Philippines, under the F26 season.
Slam Jam has been doing this since 1989, when Luca Benini started it in Ferrara to bring in the records and clothes Italy could not otherwise get. Thirty seven years later the company says it runs distribution, retail and full brand partnership work at the same time, and the Vans relationship is the kind of long form output that only comes from being all three. The first Act of Disagreement landed in October of last year.
The choice worth noting this time is what got done to the pattern rather than what got added to the shoe. The checkerboard is the most copied graphic in footwear, which means the only move left that registers as new is breaking its symmetry. Running two color pairings on one shoe is a small idea and it is a better one than another material swap would have been, because it reads from across a room and it costs nothing to manufacture. Vans has spent this fall leaning on expensive cloth to make its icons feel considered. Slam Jam got there with a layout change.
Slam Jam lists the pair at $102. Vans sells its own Classic Slip-On in checkerboard between $60 and $65 depending on the makeup, and the Premium Classic Slip-On, which is the closer comparison on construction, at $80. So the collaboration premium runs about twenty dollars over the premium version and forty over the standard one, which is restrained for a shoe carrying a partner label, a printed outsole and a fleece lined collar. Vans has not published a price of its own for this pair, so treat the $102 as the Slam Jam listing rather than a US retail figure.
Vans says the Act of Disagreement collection is available at Vans.com, select Vans stores, Slam Jam stores and select retailers. It is live at Slam Jam now. It had not surfaced in Vans.com search on either the US or the UK site as of the morning of September 11, so the wider retail availability is better read as coming than as confirmed. Slam Jam lists the style code as VN00111F95Y1, which Vans has not published anywhere yet. For more from the same corner of the Vans line, see the Undercover three shoe pack.
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