Getting your name on a pro shoe has to be an incredibly special (and overwhelming) feeling. More interestingly (to us, at least) is that the actual designing of a pro shoe comes with its own unique honors and challenges. “THIS IS A BIG DEAL!” would likely enter one’s head fairly regularly.

So what is it like? How is a pro shoe designed in an era where fewer and fewer skaters seem to get one?

Well, if you haven’t heard by now, Lizzie Armanto now has her name on a shoe, so we sat down with her and the shoe’s designer Scott Warneke and its footwear developer, David Garcia, and let them tell us how it all came together.

Also, we got to skate them :)

Village Psychic: So, this is Lizzie’s first Vans pro model. Not everybody gets a pro shoe, especially now in 2022. What does that mean to you guys to work on this?

Lizzie Armanto: It's a huge honor. I'm excited, but also humbled that Vans gave me the opportunity to make a shoe. It's such a cool experience. Color ways are cool, but that process is pretty much fill in the blanks – basically just picking which colors do you like. Getting your own shoe, you get to build this thing from the ground up, which is a lot of responsibility.

Scott Warneke: It's an honor, Lizzie is trusting us with bringing her vision to life. It's really interesting doing that during COVID. We were doing this all over Zoom, I didn't see Lizzie in real life until I dropped off some samples at our house, well into the project.

David Garcia: Also, we grew up as skateboarders. Back when we were coming up, it was the goal to have a pro shoe. And, I mean, I don't skate at that level. So to work on one is a badge of honor.

SW: Yeah, it's something that I wanted to do since I was a kid. I was that weirdo who knew I wanted to design skate shoes and went to college for it.

VP: So when you guys started the design, what was it that you had in mind?

LA: I immediately knew I wanted a high top. I didn't want all the bells and whistles. I just wanted a simple shoe made with good materials. A lot of times when a shoe goes into design, it's like, "We're making this more reinforced" and that means adding more layers, which can take away from the shoe’s design.

SW: Board feel was top of mind for this shoe. ‘Slim’ is a word that gets thrown around a lot, but it's not necessarily about being truly thinner. It's just about being closer to your board and having a little less fluff.

LA: I wanted the materials to be sustainable, which was a big push on my end, because it's a lot more work for everyone else involved.

VP: We did want to talk about the materials specifically, what is the shoe made of?

Lizzie: The rubber itself is more natural. We use an organic canvas. And the suede is produced in a chrome-free facility. The insoles are 70% biobased, which is really exciting because none of the other skate shoes have this insole.

It's made out of plants and it’ll biodegrade. Which is really cool. Vans is going to make a ton of these things, and we don't need these shoes to outlive us.

DG : This shoe shows the more eco-friendly is the direction the brand is headed in. We were we working on technology, getting it ready to add to our skate line and then Lizzie came to us like, “Hey, like, I'm really interested in like an eco-friendly shoe.” The timing was pretty perfect. She was getting a shoe and our foam was being developed and ready to go. It was a perfect moment to launch a new technology with somebody who's already interested in it.

SW : The new insole foam doesn’t come with loss of performance either, it works just like our Popcush does in terms of rebound, resilience, and impact protection. So you're not sacrificing any skate function for for the eco-friendly nature of it. It's not like greenwashing where it's just like, “Oh, it's just there just to be there and just to be eco-friendly.” It’s actually the same durometer, which you probably know as a hardness rating from wheels.

VP: The tread pattern is really interesting. I have to say grips really well, do you have input on that? Were you thinking about specifically grip when you're talking about board feel?

LA: For the tread, I really wanted a smaller waffle tread pattern because the shoes I used to skate had it. No one probably knows what this shoe is, but it's the Sk8-Hi Slim.

SW: Yeah the Sk8-Hi Slim had the micro-waffle, which is what's in the middle plate of her sole. And then advanced that with SickStick rubber, so it is a grippier rubber plus the grippy tread pattern.

VP: This toe cap is really interesting – what’s going on there?

SW: It's a 3D Duracap. It's something I worked with Lizzie on because she liked the idea of a toecap, but didn't like the visual of it. Toecaps are great for her as a vert skater, especially on knee slides, and they're obviously great for street skaters. We thought to hide it underneath the shoe materiel so you get the function, you get a ghosted image of a toe cap and you get some dimension to break it up.

VP: I really like how the side stripe is built into the shoe, what was the thinking behind that?

LA: It's more textural. I wanted my shoe to feel different, not just be another Sk8-Hi. Even if you wear it out, there'll be the Duracap under it - so who knows what color it is? Maybe sometime we'll like Easter egg a color in there.

SW: We call it a 3D Duracap side strip. And it's a kind of nerdy nod to Cara Beth Burnside's first shoe from ‘96, which had a 3D sidestripe as well. It’s kind of paying respect to one of the pioneers of skateboarding. Her shoe was the first pro skate shoe for a female pro.

DG: The duracap side stripe is also a way to give the stripe some longevity, it’s going to take a while to blow out.

SW : We're just a conduit for these ideas and making it real, Lizzie was a super active part of this process.

VP: Lizzie, we want to ask you about all the flowers. The lining in the shoe is a floral pattern, the shoes came with packets of seeds, is there a story to that?

LA: It's just ties to one of my personal hobbies. I found that gardening is really a fun hobby to do. When I first started skating, skating was my get away from real life. And now that my life is so entangled in skateboarding, gardening is my off switch to skating [laughs].

For the campaign, tying in plants and botanicals in general was just a way to tie back into the sustainability of the shoe. The shoe is VR3 certified, which is Vans’ eco-friendly initiative. That was a really big deal, because this is the first skate shoe that has made that certification.

VP: So this is natural rubber?

SW: Yeah, the rubber is a big part of the VR3 certification. It’s not just the more sustainable suedes or synthetics and organic canvases. It’s our material developers and scientists finding the best natural content, and then making it work for skateboarding.

DG: The natural rubber actually lasts longer than the synthetics that we've had and is more grippy, so there’s big benefits aside from just the sustainability aspect.

VP: All the commercial rollout stuff has been really cool. Lizzie, how close to the campaign have you been?

LA: I picked Dana Trippe for the creative director on the campaign. She's mutual friends with the Shep Dawgs. It was just a really organic partnership because I knew that she would ‘get’ skateboarding. She was working with my friends, the person who was operating the cameras is someone that I go and film with. It was just very comfortable. The campaign is huge. It's going everywhere.

VP: It was cool to see like a couple different skaters in the commercial.

LA: I picked everyone in the commercials. That was so cool, too. I felt like everyone's role was just super on-point. And it's really special that it was such a small tight crew of friends, it felt close to home.

Taylor Kirby in his new role as an actor.

VP: You can feel that when you watch it.

LA: I really think that's just a nod to the skate community for being so tight. Every person in there is their own personality within skateboarding. You wouldn't expect to see these people in a big commercial... well maybe Tony, because he can do anything. But, it was just really fun and really exciting, not only because it is for... my shoe [laughs] but also because we're coming off the pandemic. Doing a project together meant was everyone was so happy just to see each other.

Lizzie Has A New Shoe