UNDERCOVER x OTW by Vans — Emma Bennett's Painting Meets Jun Takahashi's Skate Design Collections Two Vans archive silhouettes, the Sk8-Hi and the Slip-On 98, become canvas for two opposing languages: UNDERCOVER's graphic geometry and British painter Emma Bennett's oil work. In-store now, online coming soon. A dialogue between underground imagery and contemporary painting On the Sk8-Hi, Takahashi works by subtraction. The shoe comes in two gridded colorways, Black and Egret White, both carrying his design language. This isn't a logo laid over an existing shape — it's a rework of proportion, an exercise in disciplined construction rather than embellishment, where the UNDERCOVER mark acknowledges the shoe instead of covering it. On the Slip-On 98 the register shifts entirely. The black canvas becomes ground for two Emma Bennett paintings, "Ardour" from 2011 and a more recent work tied to the pandemic years — still lifes, flames, staircases, dense interior space. It's a deliberate short-circuit: gallery painting landing on a skate shoe, and that distance is exactly where the collaboration finds its meaning.
