The Best Skate Shoe In Luxury Is Reborn Chunkier, More '90s, More Skate Shoe (EXCLUSIVE)
ERL's Vamps are already one of luxury's great skate shoes, maybe even luxury's single greatest skate shoe. That's no small feat. Culture had only just survived a long stretch of faceless high-end "skate shoes" when designer Eli Russell Linnetz debuted his own fat-tongued lace-up in 2024, leading to spendy skate shoe fatigue. But Linnetz' creation was different.
While every other fashion house proposing a skate shoe did so out of obligation for trend, Linnetz was merely operating within his comfort zone of reclaimed mallcore nostalgia. And, as an earnest stab at reframing beefy '00s-era skate shoes as something sumptuous, the ERL Vamps weren't merely expensive skate shoes. And yet, they became the ultimate expensive skate shoe.
And the Vamp's first redesign of sorts, premiered here by Highsnobiety, only makes their best qualities that much clearer.
Available on ERL's website December 4 for $535 and packaged in a way to resemble USPS boxes, the ERL Vamp Quads are a gentle reconsideration of the sneaker's pillowy form, slightly restructuring the Vamp into something that more overtly resembles its inspiration.
Clearly skate-minded, the original Vamp could maybe pass as a pair of éS or etnies from afar but, up close, its thick suede uppers and restrained paneling revealed that it was a luxury object, albeit one with respectable boardfeel.
The Vamp Quads blur that line even further. Its new thick leather panels make the sneaker feel even more like a '90s skate shoe inflated with a bike pump, a swollen Vans Lampin.
Little else is altered: the wavy midsole is intact and so is the XXXL tongue. But this one weird trick only dials in the Vamp's retro-cool leanings while amplifying the shoe's volume.
Some folks say that stripes are slimming. In the Vamp's case, not so much.
A key part of the original Vamp's charm is that they're at least partially a stealth flex — well, as stealth as an engorged skate sneaker can be. These are sneakers that do it both, normal enough to be worn by anyone anywhere but big enough to not quite be normal. Hence why ERL's signature shoe, which has rolled out in new forms that include a mule and boot, has gained popularity with younger customers who'd otherwise be shelling out for Rick Owens.
But whereas the Ricks are an overt luxury object, ERL's Vamps are as much a daily driver as plump Osiris kicks were back in the aughts. The Vamp Quads only get that much closer to the platonic ideal.
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