A Creative Reunion – Vans and MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) are launching their second collaborative drop: a footwear and apparel collection designed by female artists.
For their second joint drop, Vans and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) are collaborating with California-based artists Judy Baca, Brenna Youngblood, and Frances Stark.
The limited-edition Vans x MOCA line, which includes both footwear and apparel, celebrates creativity, culture, and California and launches for the Holiday 2021 season.
Dr. Judy Baca (born 1946) is a Los Angeles-born and based mural artist whose public works have shed light on the lives and struggles of marginalized communities for more than 40 years.
Her best-known work, *The Great Wall of Los Angeles* (1974–1984), is an 800-meter-long mural in the San Fernando Valley created in collaboration with more than 400 local youth and their families, illustrating the enduring power of community.
With the Vans x MOCA Old Skool, Baca reimagines a Vans Classics model.
The design was inspired by her work *Hitting the Wall, Women in the Marathon* (1984)—a mural commissioned for the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles that commemorates the first women allowed to compete in an Olympic marathon.
The motif also adorns the Judy Baca Jacket.
The collection’s fleece sweater features another of the artist’s works: *The World Wall: Triumph of the Hearts* (1990).
Brenna Youngblood (b. 1979) is a California-based artist from Riverside whose work rethinks the art of assemblage, combining found materials and discarded artifacts
to create works that engage with questions about the culture around her and society in general. Youngblood reinterprets the Vans Authentic with her signature abstract and colorful style.
Throughout her career, Frances Stark (*1967) has explored her fascination with the subcultures of Southern California: skateboarding, punk, rap, and the city of L.A. itself.
Stark’s love for Los Angeles is reflected in her own version of the Old Skool, which features a hand-drawn map illustrating the streets that have inspired her for decades.
The Vans x MOCA collection also includes a cotton canvas jacket, an adjustable 5-panel cotton snapback hat, and the SK8-Hi and Classic Slip-On footwear silhouettes.
Incidentally, this is already the second Vans x MOCA drop. In addition to the Artist Collection described above, there was already a collection featuring the museum itself a few weeks ago.
For this collection, Vans’ most sought-after silhouettes were reimagined with the museum’s logo—designed in the 1980s by graphic design icons Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar—and a playful green-and-white polka-dot pattern.
The MOCA graphic logo appears on Vans classics like the Classic Slip-On,
the Sk8-Hi,
and the Authentic
as well as the EVDNT UltimateWaffle,
which has been updated for the collection with an eye-catching gray MOCA colorway on the sidewall.
