The Sole Authority: Vans Welcomes Its First Archivist to Unpack Decades of Culture

Interview and photos by Sawa
Published: March 13, 2026
In Features

An iconic company like Vans, which has had a long history steeped in action sports and counterculture, has an extensive legacy. That’s where Catherine Acosta steps in as Vans’ first official archivist and brand historian to help preserve its story.

Sawa: Tell me about the early years of Vans.

Catherine: Vans was started in 1966 as the Van Doren Rubber Company. In terms of heritage, it’s truly a Southern California brand. Part of Vans’ strategy in the early years, which still has its legacy today, was direct-to-consumer retail. They owned and operated their own stores from day one. Because of that, communities were built around these stores, so the brand is really connected to Southern California culture.

If you were to look at the history of Vans, what type of people were part of this community?

In the early years, it was just regular middle-class people, before skateboarding. It was custom-made footwear for families. Our Authentic, now an icon, was originally designed as a boat shoe and marketed that way before skateboarding’s influence opened doors for BMX and surf. This ushered in counterculture elements and underground and mainstream music, largely punk.

What is the importance of archiving and preserving this history?

It serves as a reference for the company’s culture, both internally and externally. And for Vans, which has always been rooted in and speaking to youth culture for decades now, it’s really important. And then there’s the design history, you know, to see the progression of a product. Storytelling really sits at the center of any great brand, and when you reach a certain age, you have a legacy or heritage component. So being able to document, understand, and reinterpret that for the next generation is essential to a company and a brand like us.

“It’s a lifestyle shoe attached to fashion, self-expression, and a longer, deeper narrative around women’s history of traditional craft and art practices.”

Vans has crossed over into so many aspects of culture; from skating, to bands, music, arts..

For Vans specifically as a company, it has a really unique history with how it intersects with these subcultures and different communities. And it really has to do a little bit with luck, timing, and being at the right place – which is being a company founded in Southern California in the mid-to-late century period when skateboarding was really on the rise, and forming into a counter-cultural lifestyle, right? Not just a sport. Vans’ product lent themselves explicitly well to skateboarding because they were made conscientiously with durability in mind. So that opened up the door to youth culture at large in a much more formal way.

And obviously, music comes into the picture very early on. In the seventies, young people in skateboarding were listening to punk, bringing in another aspect of subculture and counterculture.

I would say the shared ethos between skateboarding and punk in the late seventies and early eighties, in this pure and untouched time period, was that they were questioning the status quo of mainstream society, whether that was through politics, social issues, lifestyle, or even fashion.

What are some of the more modern Vans art collaborations? Because of that history as custom-mades there’s always been a connection to art on the shoes. In more recent years Vans has partnered with credible formal museums, collaborating with two of my personal favorites. Vans partnered with MoMA, which was also part of MoMA’s full rebrand for the museum in New York. Vans was one of several brands that they collaborated with to do limited product, and their curatorial team picked art throughout MoMA’s collection, both historical and contemporary pieces, to showcase on shoes, apparel, and accessories. This bridged the world between low art and high art. Vans is a utilitarian shoe. Part of the company’s legacy has been that they’ve been affordable and accessible to many. So, it’s an accessible everyday object that now has very culturally valuable artworks printed on them. But anybody could get it. The same thing with MOCA and the MOCA collaboration a year or two after the MoMA one. That was great because it was partnering with a major museum institution here in California, in Los Angeles, not far from where the company’s located. They featured works of artists like Judy Baca, a great Chicana activist and public artist. It really uses the shoes to not just message great works of art within the canon of art history, but also give opportunities to showcase stories of underrepresented communities. The pair with Baca’s work showcased some of her mural work, which is about the Chicano community.

When you were getting into the archive, were there any discoveries or rabbit holes you went down that you weren’t expecting?

One of the quick discoveries was that almost from the very beginning, when Vans started in 1966, they offered customers the ability to make custom one-of-a-kind shoes, allowing them to bring in their own fabric. In the sixties and seventies, many women took an interest in this.

In the seventies and eighties, there was a renaissance of craft, and many pursued it as a leisurely activity. Needlework techniques like needlepoint were popular.

Craft stores allowed women to create needlepoint kits for sneakers, which were mailed to Van Doren Rubber Company to be assembled into a shoe. When I got here, nobody really knew much about them. Steve Van Doren, the founder’s son, distinctly recalled that when the factory received them, they had to be very delicate with them. It was a precious thing, but Vans didn’t advertise it. It’s still unclear, but craft stores across the United States, not just in California, made these kits that women could stitch and send back.

That to me was a fascinating niche in Vans and sneaker history because it counters the narrative that creativity in sneaker culture has been mostly relegated to men. I don’t know who made these, you know what I mean? So again, they stand as representations of this unknown person, presumably a woman.

It’s a lifestyle shoe attached to fashion, self-expression, and a longer, deeper narrative around women’s history of traditional craft and art practices. They’re really whimsical designs like rainbows and ladybugs. So they’re really feminine. Which I think is also partially why they’ve been overlooked at Vans because it doesn’t fit into the narrative around skateboarding or action sports. So my hope is that it could get more attention.