Puma's Clawing Back Into The Zeitgeist
Its biggest advantage? The impromptu community that formed around the brand
Puma’s been in the headlines. They just released a collaboration with a French fashion brand Rombaut, featuring ‘Levitation’ soles. They’ve partnered with Balenciaga on a limited run of Marge Bags and distressed Speedcats — a departure from the cartoonishly chunky sneakers that Demna is known for. They've invested heavily into the Fenty-Mayers household by releasing another collection with Rihanna and appointing A$AP as the CD for the brand’s partnership with F1 back in 2023. And in attempt to replicate Adidas’ success with Bella Hadid, they’ve brought on Dua Lipa and Rosé as unofficial ‘it-girls-in-residence’.
But consumers are savvy. By now, anyone who is remotely interested in fashion, understands the basic mechanics of an orchestrated resurgence campaign — luxury fashion and indie designer collabs, influencer gifting, and celebrity ambassador contracts. While all of this certainly brings exposure and drives immediate conversions, it doesn’t fill a brand with sauce. Lucky for Puma, it turns out, there is plenty of sauce in the archives, as well as a couple of culture and fashion trends colliding in the zeitgeist to create an opportunity for a grand comeback — that, of course, if they play their hand right. To help me figure out what that could look like, I spoke to three accidental Puma researchers, resellers, and archivists who, while being only lightly associated with Puma, are the main reason why I got curious and excited about the brand — Alice of Bootalicious and Rhea and Max of Andro1dGirl.
Alice, who’s been a vintage reseller on Depop since she was fifteen, decided to focus on shoes three years ago out of convenience. In the process, she started finding cool vintage Puma pieces that sparked her interest — lots of original Speedcats and ballet flats but also Circats, Lowvitations, and luxury collabs. “At the time, basically no one was buying it,” she recollected. “I was like, why does no one sell this? This is so nice,” so she decided to take a risk and buy those pieces up just around the time Puma started popping back into the zeitgeist. Rhea’s and Max’s bet on Puma was more intentional but nonetheless, just as lucky. “[Max] has these premonitions, like a fortune-teller. He was like “Rhea, I think ballet flats are gonna come back — this was two years ago,” Rhea explained. “I was like what kind of ballet flats? And he was like Puma.” Skeptical, she agreed to source and bring back vintage Puma pieces back to Melbourne from their joint trip to France. They checked in an extra suitcase full of Speed Princesses, Mostros, and some gorgeous pieces from Puma’s ‘96 Hours’ line among similar silhouettes from other sportswear brands.
All three researchers specialize in sourcing pieces from the early 2000s which feels like the golden era of Puma. “There was a lot more creativity in design back then,” Alice told me. “I also think the quality of products was generally so much better.” “We had a chat with [Florence Weber] who did the Impulse Cat which is the first ballet flat they ever did, and [Joerg Rohwer-Kahlmann] who is the designer of the Futurecat, and they were telling us that [Puma] would sent them to camps somewhere in Spain, and they would just give them a brief that was like ‘designers on acid’ — you go and you come back with what you want,” Max explained. “Puma was literally just approving everything that landed on their desk because they were in dire state with their money, they were about to collapse,” added Rhea.
“Back then Puma was amazingly open. They hired ex-Apple creative directors, teamed up with Hollywood, avoided collaborations... found other ways to market themselves. It was a company just getting out of the slumps. They took risks. They hired the youngest CEO ever (Jochen Zeitz, 38 at that time) and gave designers crazy briefs when sent on design camps (a yearly meeting of all Puma designers in a random spot somewhere in the world). Briefs became like: "Designers on LSD, go away for a week and come back with 8 commercializable yet aspirational collection ideas". Puma in my humble point of view started to become the “different” brand to what was out there, Sports lifestyle was defined and owned. 20 years later, I can state that this was the best corporate job I ever had and that kept me going. It was different. It was more “just do it”, as my then following job after Puma was with the Swoosh (Nike),” — J. Haeberle, former Puma Apparel designer in an interview with Andro1dGirl.
“Designers on acid” they were. There were Puma Kugelblitzs designed by Peter Schmid in 2004 and named after a theoretical black hole, the Levitation shoes designed by Joerg Rohwer-Kahlmann in 2005 that featured a floating heal, and Puma K-1s with a wrap-around ‘cheese sole’ designed for draining excess water while kayaking. But perhaps the most mind-bending and boundary-breaking designs came from Puma’s luxury line ‘96 Hours’ that was conceptualized as a competitor to Prada Sport, and an indoor sports line Puma Nuala that was produced in collaboration with model Christy Turlington — an early 2000s predecessor of ballet and pilates princess cores. Alice found an insane pair of 'Gol Wn’s' which is essentially a women’s dress shoe with a removable kitten heel tip, inspired by football cleats. Max and Rhea sourced a gorgeous pair of “Mahanuala” knit boots and tall suede boots from the Nuala line that the Addison Rae and Lexee Smith types would absolutely die for. And then, of course, there were a few of iconic luxury collaborations with Alexander McQueen, Mihara Yasuhiro, and Jil Sander. Pretty much all of these styles had limited runs which makes them hard to find and even identify. There are barely any traces of Puma’s most creative silhouettes and sub lines on the internet, and it’s a real community effort between the brand’s archivists and past and present employees to identify the names of certain styles and the sub lines that they belong to.
“Ahead of its time” is a phrase I saw a lot when looking through Alice’s, Max’s and Rhea’s archives. There are so many “weird” (by the mainstream standards) silhouette that could easily be the hottest shoe of the year now — in the post-hype beast, Yeezy, and Demna’s Balenciaga era that exposed the masses to all kinds of freaky conceptual footwear. Rombaut’s Levitation shoes feel like an an original concept until you realize it’s actually a modern take on an archival Puma style, and the ‘96 Hours’ dress shoes aren’t that far off conceptually from the controversial New Balance loafers. My age is showing here, but the deeper I dove into Puma’s archives, the more “back to the future” the modern state of footwear felt — either Puma designers were insanely avant-garde or fashion is really that cyclical. Max suggested it was the latter — forgotten 2000s silhouettes, which Rhea aptly described as “space age with sportswear combined” looking “fresh” to the consumers who have been “forced-fed chunky shoes and soles” for nearly a decade. “Fashion is like a rubber band — you pull, and you pull, and you pull, it’s just gonna completely wack in the other way around,” Max theorized. Still, I wondered if in the broader cultural and industry context of the early 2000s, these archival Puma silhouette felt as extraordinary as they do now in the current landscape of commercial fashion.
In 2010s, Puma went through several ownership and leadership changes as it struggled to compete financially and maybe most importantly, lost whatever cultural influence and street credit it had managed to accumulate in the early 2000s. They tried to ride the the chunky sole trend with their first ever Fenty collab which apparently, performed really well and helped reposition Puma as a fashion brand even though the only person I know who bought into those suede creepers was my best friend in college who was a huge fan of Rihanna. Outside of that, Puma became a discounted retailer staple while other prominent brands, like New Balance, Vans, and Nike cycled in and out of the zeitgeist, and young brands, like Hoka and On, entered the market.
Today, Puma is still largely under water — in January, their shares fell by 18% (the lowest they’ve been since 2018) after the brand reported lower than expected fourth-quarter sales and a decline in annual profit for 2024. The sales of Speedcats which the brand has been actively pushing as the next ‘it shoe’ and a fresh alternative to Adidas Gazelles and Sambas, have been weaker than projected, and their investment into A$AP and Rihanna, hasn’t won them as much cultural relevance as they had hoped. Still, with the current footwear market being oversaturated with collaborations, the eroding dominance of Nike, and Puma poaching a handful of folks who are responsible for turning Adidas around, it feels like there is still a window for a Puma comeback.
“Three years ago, if you wanted the cool stuff, you needed to go to a store that had a Nike TL 0 [accounts that carry the most exclusive releases] in order to get the Travis Scott and [limited drops] like that. Most of the personnel there would just backdoor everything, it would end up on Facebook Marketplace [and] Stock X…and people grew completely tired of this,” Max explained. “General Release used to be almost an insult, and it’s not the case anymore. At some point, the girls started going to Footlocker and grabbing those ASICS 1130s that you can find just about anywhere for maybe €100. And that was the death of exclusivity, no one wants [exclusive collabs] anymore. They just want to be able to go online, or to a store, and grab something.” And Puma’s comeback efforts are largely aligned with that. Unlike brands, like New Balance, whose resurgence was jumpstarted with 500s collabs, they are streamlining their messaging and marketing spend to position Speedcats (and their ballet flats variation) as the next big everyday sneaker.
That’s not to say it will be an easy feat — by now, every brand, from Nike and Vans to Miu Miu and Louis Vuitton, are gunning to kick Adidas off its pedestal with their own version of a basic skinny sneaker. The advantage that Puma does have is the community of archivists, researchers, and past employees that has organically formed around the brand in the past couple of years. Nurturing this curiosity and these connections has been instrumental in building genuine excitement around the brand. Max and Rhea got to curate an exhibit showcasing the evolution of Puma’s Speedcat from 1999 to 2025 at a brand activation in Melbourne. Alice’s archival Speedboat collection has been spotlighted by Puma UK. And George Roberts of Inside Tag, who Alice, Max, and Rhea have unanimously voted “the nicest guy ever” got to release a limited run of his own trainers with Puma among other things. “It’s so good to see Puma promoting the people who have made this comeback happen,” Alice said. “It doesn’t happen often. Normally, [a brand] would realize that there is a trend, and they would grab it and then not thank anybody.” To me, that alone makes it the type of brand that’s worth rooting for.
IN THE MARGINS:
Busy Corner has a long-promised new look thanks to my dear friend Jenny Nilsson! Please bear with me as I finish transferring over every reference, agency contact, and culture report over to the new website, as well as ironing out remaining quirks this weekend. Keep an eye out for new additions next week, and check out Jenny’s portfolio while you are here.
A couple of weeks ago, I got to speak to Claire Mazur and Erica Cerulo of 831 Stories about the merch side of their romantic fiction business for Inc. Their clever baseball hats that play into the common romance tropes (i.e. Enemies to Lovers) as well as their ‘in-universe’ items designed to prolong their readers’ time with their favorite 831 Stories book characters have become a much larger than expected source of both revenue and exposure for the brand. Thank you to my editor
(who also writes) for the opportunity!
Love this! Any thoughts on the Jay Z and Puma? https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/jay-z-puma-relationship/
Wow these archive puma photos are great - nice finds