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"Planning on flexing your sartorial muscles in the blog arena? You'll need to come packing. And no, we're not referring to your pocket square game. Every week on The Eye, we'll cover a basic term you need to know right now... before you get laughed off the internet.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nThey may be the kicks made famous by Sean Penn's character Jeff Spicoli in the 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High but the story of classic Vans slip-on really begins with the idea of not slipping at all. Paul Van Doren never set out to conquer the American sneaker industry; in fact, you could say he stumbled his way into it. During the '40s, Van Doren was just another high school dropout, ambling around his Boston neighborhood, until one day his mother had enough and decided to get him a job at the shoe factory where she worked. Paul worked his way up through that company until finally, sometime in the '60s he was serving as ecutive vice president. Around the same time Van Doren was charged with saving a factory out in Southern California that was in total disarray. So, he rounded up his brother Jim, his good friend Gordon Lee, and, in under a year that SoCal factory was doing better business than it's East Coast counterpart. After this little taste of independence, Van Doren decided to go into business for himself right away.\n\nThe Van Doren brothers, Lee, and a few other partners built out an Anaheim factory and began churning out simple rubber soled shoes under the name, The Van Doren Rubber Company. The idea was to start out with direct-to-consumer sales in order to keep costs low. On their opening day, March 16, 1966, the company sold twelve shoes for just $2.50 a piece. But soon shoes took off like a California wildfire, with skateboarders and BMX riders flocking to the flagship store to purchase the cheap canvas shoes. The sneakers became so popular with skaters in particular because the rubber bottoms provided a better grip on their board than any other shoe out there.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nIt wasn't until 1976, though, that Van Doren created the shoe that would become the epitome of laid back California cool. The Vans \"Slip-on\" was even more basic than the company's original models--no laces, no eyelets, just canvas and elastic sewn onto a waffle sole. Skaters and surfers, bums and businessmen, actors and artists, hell, just about everyone found something to love with the simple slip-on, soon making it one of the brand's most popular models. The Slip-on still reigns supreme today, as fans across the world quite literally slip into that easygoing attitude when they toss on a pair. Grab a pair for summer and I can guarantee you'll be talking like Spicoli before you know it--not that that's necessarily a good thing.\n\nJake Gallagher writes the blog Wax-Wane. He lives in Manhattan.\n\nRead more Dropping Knowledge:\n\n Read More http://www.gq.com/style/blogs/the-gq-eye/2013/05/dropping-knowledge-the-cargo-pant.html#ixzz2VMHmz2Uf\n\n Dropping Knowledge: The Cargo Pant\n\nDropping Knowledge: The Polo Shirt\n\nDropping Knowledge: Jay Gatsby's White Flannel Suit"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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