Fallen

Fallen makes skate shoes, not decks — if you came for wood, what’s here is vulcs and cupsoles. Jamie Thomas started it in 2003, right after walking away from Circa, and from day one it was rails, metal and people getting broken off. It’s also one of the few skate brands that died and came back: it shut down in 2016 and reopened in 2019 with a new owner and half the original team.

History

Fallen was literally born inside another brand: in 2003 it was announced that DC Shoes would manufacture and distribute it under licence from Thomas. The deal was cancelled in 2005 when Quiksilver bought DC, and the split was amicable — DC president Ken Block called Fallen “the top new emerging footwear brand in the skateboard industry”. From there it ran through Black Box Distribution, Thomas’ own outfit. The best years were 2006 and 2007. Then everything landed at once: the financial crisis, a factory fire that forced a supplier change mid-season with the quality and delivery mess that brings, corporate brands leaning on retailers, and Chris Cole leaving in 2011. On 11 April 2016 Thomas announced the shutdown with a statement still quoted today: “this has become increasingly more difficult for skate shoe brands. We are choosing to bow out rather than waver from this mission.” On 1 January 2018 the worldwide trademark passed to Town Connection, an investment group based in Buenos Aires, and in February 2019 Fallen was back with Chris Cole, Tommy Sandoval and Billy Marks.

The team

The core today is the Dern brothers — Dalton and Kanaan — plus Tommy Sandoval, Billy Marks, Chris Cole, Elliot Sloan and Nolan Miskell. They toured Argentina in 2023 and in 2024 ran “Road to Wacken”, crossing Germany on shop demos on the way to the metal festival. The latest full-length, “Rise” (2026), premiered at the La Paloma theatre in Encinitas and is a fair X-ray of the company: big rails and not much else.

The shoes

The flagship is still the Patriot, now available as a vulc, as a cupsole, as the XP and as a vegan build. Alongside it sit The Goat, the Bomber, the Heritage, The Valor, the Melrose, The Decade, The Rambler, the Trooper and the Phoenix. Current pro models: The Daytona (Dalton Dern), The Knockout (Kanaan Dern), the Pawn (Billy Marks) and the Coronado, Regal and Apache (Tommy Sandoval). There’s also a Birdhouse collab, The Fiend II, tied to Elliot Sloan. Of the first-era classics — Clipper, Rival, Forte — the Trooper and the Patriot are the survivors.

Who it’s for

If you skate rails and stairs and want a thick, reinforced cupsole shoe, Fallen is one of the few still building for that without athletic-brand pricing. If you want a paper-thin vulc so you can feel everything, look at the vulc Patriot or at another brand entirely. Line it up against the rest in the shoe catalog.