Aaron Hope 
Japanese streetwear suppliers SOPHNET. get the lion’s share of credit when we think back to which collaborators were on the cutting edge of the zippered trend we first saw applied to classic basketball sneakers last spring. But longtime Sneaker News readers will remember that Vans’ Far East friends have been contributing zip-up designs for longer than many of our visitors have been collecting! You’ll have to go all the way back to 2008 to find a time when Jun Watanabe’s wingtip boots closed the CdG x Vans capsule and opened the door to Taka Hayashi’s zip-up No Skools a couple months later. In the meantime, we’ve seen Off the Wall utilize zippers on their 2010 Hellz Bellz teamup and most recently on the heel of a Vans Sk8-Hi courtesy of mastermind JAPAN last fall, but their frequency has been sufficiently sparse so as to make it feel like they stand outside of this trend. That misconception is quickly rectified when you see that there are three new Sk8-Hi Zips on the way from Vans Vault this May, and you can find images of each pair after the jump below. via FNG
