Notes From the Runway — Dime & Vans Live At Paris Fashion Week

This was not the Dime Glory Challenge.

Most of us would be so lucky as to be cursed with authorship a thing that overshadows every other thing we could possibly make after it. Whether it’s a hit song, a pair of baggy Swedish jeans or a logo that could be reproduced into oblivion — making it there is the peak of that 80/20 rule that you always hear about.

But what if your “curse” isn’t a song that you could perform for the rest of your life, or a logo that sells out every time you reprint it? What if it’s an event that requires, say, 18 months of preparation before you begin the high-wire act on the big day?

The Glory Challenge is Dime’s “thing” — no matter how many fire garms, YouTube platinum skate videos, or iconic retail employee training videos they produce, it will likely remain to be The Thing™.

But just because you have The Thing™, doesn’t mean you don’t go on to make other things. Dime does many things: clothes, videos, even coffee. And they also do other events. Live in Paris, which went down this past weekend, is a much simpler endeavor than the high holiday of glory bestowment. Dime and Vans built a replica of their Montreal flagship inside of a shipping container, shipped it to France, parked it along the Seine for two days, then moved it to the outskirts of Paris and invited a bunch of skaters to skate the store fixtures.

Paris …is not Montreal. While any Dime event is the center of the conversation in their home city whenever they go down, in Paris, just on this particular weekend, they had to compete with Paris Fashion Week, the Rugby World Cup, and some pre-Olympic thing that we didn’t ask too many questions about.

And what better way to remind the world that you do other things — other smaller events! — than to do it the place where like, idk, the fuckin’ Chanel show is.

This other thing had quite a turnout. Within eight seconds of it starting, every piece of prime standing room had been taken. People started climbing atop crates, trucks, and foot-wide ledges for a glimpse of the temporary Dime store’s dismantling via skateboard. If you hadn’t acted in that eight-second window, you resigned yourself to watching the back of people’s heads for three hours.

But what if I told you there was another show going on beyond the skateboarding? There were a dozen other media outlets covering the tricks — how many times did you see Chris Pfanner’s event-closing kickflip on your timeline? We, on the other hand, have been to a Dime event or six in the past. Our attention shifted towards the natural runway in the background of the main event.

It was, after all, Paris Fashion Week.

All Dime events — not just Glory Challenges — differentiate themselves from other skate events by really bringing the fits out. People dress up for it, at least with more thought than they would for any other skate event. In 2018, we explored this phenomenon in our Glory Challenge recap entitled “Montreal Fashion Week,” which is not real. (Montreal Fashion Week actually is a real thing, but it’s less real than Paris Fashion Week. It’s the fashion world’s …other thing.)

Live in Paris …is not a Glory Challenge. But the Parisians came dressed like it was one. During real fashion week.

Isn’t that the most important thing of all?

Previously: 2022 D.G.C., Live At Stadium (2019), 2018 D.G.C., 2017 D.G.C., 2016 D.G.C.