On Tuesday night at Cipriani 25 on Broadway, Puma staged a fashion extravaganza to mark their return to the New York Fashion Week Runway. Futrograde, as the show was titled, looked to offer a celebratory exploration of Puma’s heritage and place at the intersection of fashion, sports, and culture by looking back at its history and offering an outlook towards the future. A tall order—after all, how do you say all that with fashion?
In comes the immersive experience of tonight’s show. Through a series of dance performances, trippy visuals, and a runway full of familiar faces—curated by Puma creative director June Ambrose—the sportswear brand reminded the crowd of its imprint on culture. Showing Puma staples like side stripe tracksuits (called T7 stripes), suede accents, and the Puma motif itself, the three chapter show (separated into segments by a series of dance performances) put the label’s impact on display.
“Past, present, and future, it’s about a collective retrospective of the history of Puma and the foundation it stands on,” Ambrose said backstage as she took a break from taking photos with fans. “The idea that street culture has eclipsed every mainstream fashion brand is what we celebrated tonight,” she added. Indeed, if there was something to take away from today’s show and the work of folks like Ambrose herself or, say, Virgil Abloh, it’s that street culture has transported brands like Puma from utility-only sports brands to mainstay cultural behemoths.
Heiko Desens, global creative director and head of innovation at Puma, said that they wanted to do something looking into the future while incorporating Puma’s heritage and cultural relevance in different communities. The first chapter of the show was about classic Puma: the T7 stripe, basketball shoes, and more timeless icons. “We included some of them in their original shape, but we also wanted to have fun and remix the looks and shapes together to bring them into the now,” he said. Alton Mason opened this segment of the show in a tracksuit suit (meaning a tracksuit cut as a tailored suit) with a fluffy overcoat. An assortment of other tracksuit remixes and monogram logo separates in the same beige tone as Mason’s followed. Other looks included a very cool red tracksuit reimagined in smooth leather and Puma sneakers rendered as knee-length boots or massive platforms. Winnie Harlow and Usain Bolt closed the segment in black tie tracksuits.
The second chapter, Desens said, was about speaking to the different regions the brand serves. Here is where they chose to show all of their partnerships, from a collaboration with Spanish brand Palomo to others with Parisian label Koché and AC Milan. “We wanted to pick those very focused designs we do for specific communities and then style them in unusual ways,” he said. This portion of the show was the most visually compelling in terms of a fashion proposal. Some highlights included a puffer hat shaped like the head of a puma with a look made with Palomo, and a hat made from a tower of baseball caps.
The final chapter, which imagined the future, was the wildest and most innovative in terms of design. “Nobody knows exactly where the future is going, so we allowed ourselves to be experimental,” Desens said. Most striking were a puffer jacket ball skirt with several sleeves—yes, the first thing that came to mind was The Little Mermaid’s Ursula—worn by professional basketball player Kyle Kuzma, and an inflated balloon-like puffer jacket that offered an equally excited and slightly dystopian glimpse into our could-be future.
Ambrose said that going forward, Puma wants to hone innovation while addressing its customers’ needs outside performance, and that they want to build a fashion business with them. “Life is a sport,” she added. “We’ve always played to win.”
Discover more on this episode of The Run-Through with Puma creative director June Ambrose here.