TW by Vans Puts the Era Through a Distressed, Lived-In Rewrite With the “Relic” Pack

Three colorways of the Era 95 DST arrive under Vans’ premium OTW line on August 14, treating the checkerboard classic to a sun-faded, pre-scuffed makeover.

OTW by Vans rel the Era 95 DST “Relic” pack in Japan on August 14, a set of three colorways that push the brand’s original skate shoe through a heavily worn, archive treatment. The Era, Vans’ first purpose-built skate sil, dates back roughly half a century, and this version updates it with a washed duck canvas upper, a padded collar left with a deliberately raw, cut-off edge, and fuzzy premium laces meant to read as already broken in. The sidewalls carry extra thickness modeled on the Era’s archive proportions, finished with a worn, used-up texture rather than a clean factory edge, and the shoe runs on Sola Foam ADC, a high-rebound polyurethane midsole built with 30 percent bio-based material for all-day comfort, paired with the brand’s sig waffle rubber outsole and an OTW-branded heel scuff.

Three colorways make up the pack: “Relic Checkerboard” (VN00114A705), which distresses Vans’ most identifiable print rather than presenting it clean; “Relic Navy/Red,” listed under VN00114AY9T; and “Relic Black,” under VN00114ABLK. Vans’ own Japan storefront lists the Checkerboard pair at ¥15,950 tax included, a price point that sits well above the brand’s mainline Era retail and puts the Relic pack squarely in OTW’s premium tier rather than its everyday lineup. The shoes are produced in China, per the official product listing, with materials capped at canvas rather than the mixed-leather builds OTW has used for some of its higher-end collaborations.

Retail for the pack in Japan runs through Vans’ own online store starting at 9:00 a.m. local time on release day, alongside select stockists; boutique retailer Union Tokyo has also listed the Checkerboard pair for its own 9:00 a.m. online launch the same morning, with a second restock window the following day. U.S. retail has already started rolling out ahead of the Japan date, with the Checkerboard colorway listed domestically at $110, suggesting the Japan price reflects a standard import markup rather than a region-specific premium.

Three Vans Low-Top Shoes In Checkerboard, Black, And Red-Blue Colorways

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The Relic pack lands roughly two and a half years into OTW by Vans‘ run as the brand’s pinnacle category, a line that replaced the two-decade-old Vault by Vans platform when it launched in early 2024. OTW was first teased during Paris Fashion Week Men’s in the summer of 2023, staged around a live skate installation on the banks of the Seine, before its full debut arrived the following February with a Half Cab Reissue 33 Vibram as its inaugural release. Vans has described the OTW creative direction internally as “Checkered Future,” a framing that ties directly back to the checkerboard print that has defined the brand since the 1970s and now recurs across the Relic pack in distressed form. Ian Ginoza, who leads creative direction for OTW, has said the line is meant to function less as a single seasonal drop and more as an ongoing point of view, encompassing product, collaboration, and community activations alike, positioned above Vans’ mainline output the way Vault once was but built around a more deliberately archival, skate-first identity.

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Since its debut, OTW has leaned heavily on collection, working with names like S.R. Studio. La. Ca., Undercover, and photographer-turned-creative-director Julian Klincewicz, but the Relic pack sits closer to OTW’s in-house archival releases, the ones built to reinterpret Vans’ own history rather than filter it through an outside convincer. That distinction matters for how the Era 95 DST reads: rather than reworking the shoe’s construction wholesale, the Relic treatment leaves the form essentially untouched and instead ages it, applying a worn, pre-loved finish to a shoe whose original appeal always rested on how well it survived actual wear. It is a subtler kind of premium than a collide logo or an unfamiliar shape, betting instead that collectors will pay OTW pricing for a more convincing version of a shoe that has already earned its scuffs the hard way.