The Beatles X Vans

This year's GRAMMYs marked the first in a long line of special tributes that will commemorate the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ historic appearance on America’s The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. The two surviving members of the iconic rock band, Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, reunited to perform and accept the Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award in the run up to next month’s TV special, which will be broadcast on US network CBS on 9th February at 8pm – the exact day, date and time four men from Liverpool appeared on US television in New York to take both America and the world by storm. 

The Beatles with Ed Sullivan – 9th February 1964

Beatlemania transcends musical tastes and continues to command lucrative interest as only the greatest band of all time can. After more than forty years since the band’s break-up, brand-Beatles has worked with influential designers on a variety of collaborations that have included street wear label A Bathing Ape to high-end Japanese fashion house COMME des GARÇONS. In this special year Vans will release a capsule collection of their trademark canvas sneakers emblazoned with trippy imagery from The Beatles’ 1968 animated film and album art Yellow Submarine, illustrated by Heinz Edelmann. The Yellow Submarine collection will include four colourways of distinct psychedelic graphics on Authentic, Era, Sk8-Hi and Slip-On models.

This highly anticipated collection is a first into the forays of footwear using Yellow Submarine iconography and follows previous collaborations between Vans and music heavyweights that include a 2013 release with heavy metal band Metallica. It may be nearly fifty years old but the Yellow Submarine collection looks as fresh and contemporary in 2014 as it did in the Sixties and will no doubt keep new and existing Beatles fans on their toes.

The Beatles X Vans capsule collection will launch on 1st March 2014 and will retail between $65 and $75 - check out full details of the collection at Vans.com

Visit GRAMMY.com for further information about The Night That Changed America: A GRAMMY Salute to The Beatles TV special airing next month. 

Images courtesy of Vans & © 2009 Apple Corps Ltd.

The Well-heeled

A landmark in the history of the shoe is cited as early as the ninth-century when the attachment of a heel was constructed to hold a horse rider's foot in the stirrup. Through history foot decoration has played an extraordinary role of identity, spanning all cultures and corners of the globe. It was the French nobility from the sixteenth-century however who used their soles to project their social standing and so the term well-heeled was born. Before the risings of the French Revolution high-heeled shoes, for both men and women, became synonymous with opulent wealth for over two centuries until their abrupt end in the late eighteenth-century when the very associations that were once admired turned quickly into a right of passage towards the guillotine.

So to the irony, when a French fashion house steeped in equine luxury and purveyor of exclusivity such as Hermès, meets an American sneaker brand who cater for the urban youth in an unofficial collaboration by American stylist Robert Verdi. Verdi has customised a series of Vans Slip-Ons with vintage Hermès silk scarves that bring together the classic trademark products of their respective brands to define the 'High-Low' style of the twenty-first century. While identity continues to be expressed through fashion today, a pair of these silky kicks will definitely have you walking in contemporary harmony... on horseback or BMX.