Awake NY and Vanson Take Their Leather Jackets to Film

Awake NY and Vanson Leathers are putting a film online at 1pm on Saturday, November 7, titled ¿K LO K?, and it is the latest step in a Vanson leather partnership that began with a reworked Star Jacket in Fall Winter 2024. This time Awake NY is presenting the collaboration with a full film crew credited, where earlier chapters relied on lookbooks and product pages.

The title is a shortened version of "qué lo qué," a Dominican Spanish greeting that means roughly "what's up." It sits beside a jacket maker based in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Vanson Has Been in the Room Since 2024

Vanson has appeared in Awake NY's work since Fall Winter 2024, when the first collaboration reworked the Star Jacket in red, blue, yellow, black and white with the Awake NY crown logo on the chest. A second Vanson jacket ran inside the Coca Cola capsule, in red and black.

On August 17, 2025, Awake NY and Jordan Brand released two Air Jordan 5 colorways with a pair of Vanson jackets built to match each shoe, listed as the Vanson Origin Jacket in pink and blue. Press descriptions of the design point to Vanson's skeleton appliqué motif, Awake NY patches at the shoulders and an enlarged globe graphic across the back. The Fall Winter 2025 season carried a Skeleton Vanson jacket again.

Cold World, the Fall Winter 2026 collection, opened at the 62 Orchard Street flagship on September 19, 2026, and its imagery showed a Vanson jacket with skeletal markings around a star that holds both brand names. That makes at least five Vanson jacket projects since Fall Winter 2024: the Star Jacket, the Coca Cola jacket, the Jordan 5 pair, the Skeleton and now the Cold World star.

The Crew Is the Announcement

The credits attached to the film run longer than most apparel announcements. They list a director, a creative director, a director of photography, a camera operator who also works as gaffer, and an editor who also handles the color grade. Awake NY thanks Vanson Leathers and Davon Bean at the bottom.

Bean matters to the pairing. He founded Fly Geenius and is Vanson Leathers' first creative director of streetwear, and in September 2022 his Fly Geenius label released a Vanson capsule with Aleali May. A Vanson creative director credited on an Awake NY film suggests the two companies are working as partners and not as a brand and a supplier.

The last Vanson chapter was told in stills: Cold World was a 20 image lookbook shot by Dan Martensen with Alia West styling. A film with a gaffer and a colorist puts the same kind of jacket in motion.

Fall River Still Makes the Jackets

Vanson was founded in 1974 by Mike van der Sleesen and James Goodson, and the name combines their surnames. It first made its name in racing leathers, with a first big break in 1979 when it built suits for rider Dale Singleton, and it later moved production to the Laurel Lake Mill in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Gear Patrol has reported that the workshop turns out around 120 jackets a week, and the brand has worked with Comme des Garçons for more than eight seasons. That is a modest weekly output, and any Vanson collaboration is limited by how many jackets the Fall River floor can sew.

Drop 2 Landed Seven Days Earlier

Saturday's film follows a busy autumn for the label. Drop 2 of FW26 went on sale on Saturday, October 31, 2026, in store and online, 42 days after Cold World opened. No piece list was published for it, and the North Face 700 Season project, teased on October 15, is still undated.

Leather has run through the label's whole year. In August its Air Jordan 6 pair, Midnight Navy and Playful Pink, used Saffiano leather, with a Seward Park launch event on August 22, 2026.

Angelo Baque still owns Awake NY and took one outside investor, Light Work, in the summer of 2022.

The film itself is the only part of Saturday that is confirmed. Awake NY has not said whether a Vanson jacket is going on sale with it, how long the film runs or which pieces appear in it. The date, the 1pm start, which carries no time zone, and the crew credits are all the label has put on the record.