Vault by Vans no more, say hello to OTW by Vans.

The VF Corp.-owned global surf, skate and streetwear player is launching the brand new premium label during Paris Men’s Fashion Week with a skateable installation on the Seine and a star-studded party to generate buzz for its first collaboration under the brand new label, with Los Angeles multimedia artist Sterling Ruby.

Vans OTW is the brainchild of Ian Ginoza, who joined the Costa Mesa, California-based company last yr to direct the creative strategy for its elevated product. He arrived with 15 years experience within the collaboration space at Adidas, Nike and Converse, and because the cofounder of Kicks/HI in Honolulu and Saint Alfred in Chicago.

“We’re launching a latest platform where we’re going to accommodate our most pinnacle product expressions and brand experiences. This can also be where the brand will intersect with innovators within the culture of skate, style, design and entertainment,” he told WWD exclusively.

Helping Vans enterprise beyond the surf/skate market, Vault launched in 2003, and through the years has had quite a few collaborators, from luxury brands to streetwear designers and artists, including Gucci, Brain Dead, Fear of God, Fergadelic and Frida Kahlo.

“With Vault, the unique mission was really a celebration of classic art, classic heritage and craft and that is more a couple of shift in considering rooted within the mindset and attitude of skateboarding, exploration, taking risks and in innate curiosity,” said Ginoza. “We wish to essentially push the boundaries of product expression and brand experiences.”

That may include producing latest silhouettes of sneakers, he said, and fewer but higher collaborations. The primary can be dropping in early 2024 with Ruby.

“Being a former pro-skater, he has a deep reference to Vans, and he wore loads of Vans when he was in his skating years,” Ginoza said. “During the last six to eight months of getting a dialogue with him, he truly loves the brand.”

“I purchased my first pair of Vans at age 11, about 40 years ago now. In some ways, this pair of shoes became my indoctrination into skate and punk music culture, which wound up being a lifeline for me,” Ruby said. “Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, Vans represented how I envisioned West Coast freedom, something I later chased. I actually have been in Los Angeles for the past 20 years and so many things drove me to the West — Vans was that first pull.”

Ruby has been creating clothing alongside his artwork for greater than a decade. He worked in the style space with Raf Simons at Calvin Klein in 2014, and presented his own art-to-wear collections at Pitti Uomo and in Paris from 2019 to 2021.

But he has a distinct type of affinity for Vans. “The corporate began in 1966 and has run in tandem to so many skaters, bands and movements which were influential to me, my art and the way my studio runs as an entire,” the artist said.

Vault by Vans will conclude by the tip of 2023, making way for OTW by Vans in early 2024 with its own e-commerce and choose fashion wholesale partners globally.

Men’s, women’s and unisex apparel and footwear can be presented in two distinct lines under OTW by Vans: OTW, a chosen space for collaborators, and Premium Standard, an elevated collection of classics.

The value point can be higher than the foremost line but not luxury. OTW isn’t chasing after Nike Dior.

Ginoza hired Dylan Petrenka, formerly Nike’s senior footwear designer for men’s sport style innovation, as OTW’s footwear design director, and girls’s streetwear trailblazer Lanie Alabanza-Barcena, founding father of HlzBlz, as OTW’s apparel and accessories director.

“I’m fans, they’re experts in what they do they usually include a pedigree and an acumen that’s much needed for what we’re trying to attain,” he said. “We glance to influence the brand as an entire.”

On the collaboration side, he’s not curious about five latest drops every week.

“This space has turn into quite homogenous and quite convoluted. We just need to be more considered….So far as what other brands do, I don’t really pay an excessive amount of attention to it. I just need to do what’s right for Vans and OTW and it’s really about working with the appropriate people, which leads us to working with fewer. We wish to make certain we’re constructing a collective that’s kindred to 1 one other.”

Going forward, most Vans collaborations will occur through the OTW platform, other than a number of licensing deals and other partnerships within the foremost line.

Touching down at Paris Fashion Week was a natural for visibility. “Paris has a wealthy history and community in skateboarding, and skateboarding has a natural connection and influence within the style and fashion conversation,” he said.

The skateable installation at Pont Alexandre III, open Thursday through Saturday, has been designed by Playlab, the L.A. creative firm that has worked with Virgil Abloh, Bruno Mars and more.

Shoes hand-customized by Ruby’s S.I.R. Studios can be shared with friends of the brand to wear at PFW events, including public skating sessions.

The pressure is on for Vans to deliver a turnaround for its parent company, which on Tuesday named former Logitech and Procter & Gamble executive Bracken Darrell chief executive officer.

VF Corp. limped out of the fourth quarter with a net lack of $214.9 million with Vans seeing revenues slide 14 percent to $857 million.

“Vans like loads of brands has passed through peaks and valleys however the one thing that Vans has that our competitors don’t is we were born from skateboarding,” Ginoza said. “In some ways, OTW is a reorientation back to who we truly are, Off the Wall, and I believe that can be our uniqueness and point of difference amongst the competitive landscape.”

Starting in Paris, where the team shot the OTW campaign images, including one featuring a glimpse of a classic Old Skool 36 sneaker with a latest OTW construct and expression.

“There’s a deep and wealthy skateboard history in Paris and a large community. Every time I’m there for business, I take my team and even go by myself to Republique and watch the youth get down,” Ginoza said. “It’s such an iconic historical city and seeing how skateboarders interact with that environment, it’s quite beautiful.”