Dagger's Destroyed Vans Aren't "Something to Be Coveted" (Exclusive)

A lone pair of Vans sits atop a pedestal somewhere inside Dover Street Market Paris. Worn down, ripped up, and scribbled on, they look like memories. And in some ways, these Vans are just that. Memories. 

But this pair is also one of 150 released by the Berlin-based skatewear label Dagger. Each one has been lovingly, painstakingly, customized to look like the ones from founder Luke Rainey’s childhood in Portrush, Ireland. Set within the luxury boutique’s cavernous basement, the experiential, expansive pop-up also premieres Ghosts, a deeply personal new short film Rainey filmed in Portrush for Fall/Winter 2026, featuring Dagger-clad youths re-enacting Rainey’s own adolescent memories. 

The Dover Street Market installation is the culmination of six years of hard work to get the brand off its feet, growing from a small collection of grungy graphic tees into a full-fledged fashion label. It's also the first stop in an international rollout that’ll take Ghosts to Tokyo and Berlin and introduce another custom piece alongside the Vans: a line of 150 Eastpak backpacks covered in handmade illustrations, plus patches by graphic designer Hugo Jalabert, who's worked with everyone from Versace to Louis Vuitton. 

The bags will come later — releasing at stockists in Italy, Japan, and South Korea in October — but for now, Dagger’s focus is fully in Paris. During a coffee-and-cigarette break before the DSM Paris pop-up, Rainey sent us a handful of WhatsApp voice notes about the lore behind the Vans and Eastpak collabs, plus the pride (and shock) of seeing his Portrush memories translated into a short film.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Portrush has haunted every part of the brand from the start, so Ghosts feels like a natural title. What was it like to finally see these memories onscreen?

I look at it with relief and shock that it happened, but also a lot of pride. It was a super difficult process to get this made. I'm in my sixth year of the brand, and I'm still funding it completely on my own, so there usually isn't money for things like making a film. I really had to pull in my community and friends; there were many times when we thought we were going to have to pull it, but it's here. 

In a more personal way, it's very confronting. I had a horrendous experience growing up queer there and experienced extreme bullying and extreme isolation. I was completely alone, hence the title Ghosts: I was invisible in a town full of people, and felt like a ghost. Seeing that environment again on screen with the Dagger kids feels like looking at my future and my past combined. It's hard to say how I feel about that, because I don't really understand how I feel myself. I hope that through the film, I'll be able to make peace with past me and future me. 

Each pair of Vans leaves the studio already carrying a bit of Dagger spirit. Once someone takes a pair home, what do you hope they add to it?

With this shoe in particular, we wanted to promote the idea that footwear — especially limited-edition footwear like this — isn't something to be coveted, put in a glass box somewhere, and kept pristine. It's something to be worn; it should encourage you to live your life in it. We distressed and disintegrated the shoe and dyed it to make it look like it had already had a life and a story.

That story is mine, but as soon as the buyer or wearer puts it on, it becomes theirs. I hope I see someone wearing the shoe in five years' time and it looks completely different from the one we gave them, because it's become theirs.

Vans is one of your key collaborators. How has the relationship grown alongside the brand, and what makes this project different?

The shoe we're releasing today with Dover Street Market Paris comes from a pair I took to our Paris showroom and sat in the middle of the room — honestly, just to flex that we were working with Vans, because it legitimized the brand at that point. We'd never done a show before, and at that stage we were known more as a T-shirt brand, so I had a lot to prove.

The buyers immediately walked up to the Vans and tried to buy them, so I hit Vans up and told them, "Guys, these amazing tier-one stores are interested in this shoe. Is there something we can do?" That's how we came up with the concept of doing these 150 custom pairs, plus the events around the release.

How did the Eastpak collection come about? And why is the backpack such a key part of the collection?

It was the same with the Vans: I put an Eastpak backpack in the middle of the showroom, and buyers and customers wanted it immediately. We worked out a deal for 150 bags, and I hit up my friend Hugo to make some amazing patches for the bag. He started off as a customer, and from there we became friends. And then Serena, who works in-house at Dagger, did every single illustration by hand. There’s a lot of our community in those bags.

One of my fondest memories is actually my grandmother teaching me how to sew. She was stitching patches on my bag, and I wasn't very good at it because I wasn't very patient — it's kind of hilarious that I've ended up in fashion. So it was important to me to have the Eastpak bag in the show because it was the first time I really started telling the story of that time in my life: as a queer kid, [my backpack] was where I would hide little letters and little notes. I remember I had a CD from a gay guy I met in a club — when I was far too young to be there — of a pop star’s album he'd downloaded from LimeWire. I couldn't show anybody. I kept that CD in my backpack, along with many other things that definitely shouldn't have been in my backpack at that age. It held my whole world.

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