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How did your relationship with Puma develop for this project, and what was the initial process like working through the archive?
Puma and SF have a very strong relationship at an Australian level. We have done a lot of work together on stuff previously and they have supported the magazine from the earliest days. For the PUMA guys here in Melbourne (Shout to Sherrin, Liam and Carly), it's a major feather in their caps that we did this together... colabs of this sort are still really rare as most multi-nationals couldn't give a rats about Australia. With regards to the shoe, all I originally said to them was that I wanted a new shoe, and I asked for the polar opposite of the Clyde. The Disc Blaze is great but the Disc is a little crazy some days and besides, it's been done before. So what better than to bring a completely new take on that shoe with the classic Trinomic sole unit? Plastic straps on sneakers are indicative of a certain design era that will always be challenging - just check the Omni Lite and Huarache for example. And if you ever get to try the Blaze of Glory on, it is mental comfortable, probably superior to Air Max for all round appeal. For a lot of Nike heads that's heresy but I defy anyone to try and tell me different.
How important is it for you to help reintroduce a model, like with the Lacoste Missouri?
I think that with the position we are in, we have a duty to ourselves and to the world at large to only put our imprimatur to different models. New models. Things the world hasn't seen before or have been lost for ages. With our help, maybe we can break a new shoe for a brand? I don't know, I guess that's the idea. I can't be writing shit in the magazine and then not being held to account personally.... and I have been very big on the need for new stuff to come through. The Missouri was right out of left field and look at Lacoste now! So I'd rate that as probably one of the most successful colabs of recent years... not for resale value alone, or hypeability or raw sales, it just sucker punched everyone. I think the general reaction at the time was GTFO! Then when they saw the shoe it all made sense, and now the Missouri is an established shoe. Under Mark Godwin's direction, Lacoste has really cemented it's reputation.
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Since you mention plastic straps, let's discuss the role of material and its ability to push a design forward. I'd like to sort of chat generally, but also hear you rational for the material choices on the Puma.
Well materials is one thing... I had to design ours without a catalogue of high-tech meshes and new materials in my hand so it's fairly limited in some ways unless you're being given access to some laboratory and a mad professor. So colour was very important... Let me ask you - how hard do you think it is to design a really stand-out shoe colour these days? Well take that thought and multiply it by a thousand, then double it and add a million and then you'd be about half way there. So when we sat down to do the shoe, we had to think about being sympathetic to the silhouette first and foremost, then we had to filter that through 30 years of sneaker history. The first colour was greys with a little red and cyan blue which fitted with our theme that had been developed. A week later, after I had the colours sorted I realised that maybe I had subconsciously absorbed my 3 year old boy Sonny's obsession with Thomas the Tank Engine. That freaked me out! None of us can escape our experiences and influences but I wasn't expecting that one. I might point out that you can do anything and some tithead will always find a Nike shoe to compare it to. In our case it was the Structure, which is idiotic, even if the two shoes are somewhat alike. I mean really.... The PUMA was designed over a year and a half ago, and the Structure was not on the cards, so how am I supposed to know it's gonna be released again? And I can't use a little red and blue? It is easy to get all worked up about it but a little controversy never hurts and you certainly can't keep every punk happy. We got dissed on Puma Talk as well, which was funny coming from there.
And, one more on material. Shark?
Yeah that was a nice little surprise. Remi Carette who is our Online Media Director came up with the shark concept at the pub on a Friday afternoon. It was hell hot outside and we were talking about the shoe and how we should do something Australian that we could communicate. The day before an abalone diver in Eden had been swallowed up to his waist by a Great White and he fought the thing off with his bare hands and survived, it was a crazy story on the news down here.
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Sharks are a fact of life if you swim here, nearly everyone knows someone who has been bitten by a shark. We also eat a lot of shark here in fish and chips, we call it flake, it’s real name is Gummy Shark as they have no teeth. Anyway... the more we delved into the shoe, the more it became obvious that it was meant to happen... after the initial Great White design was sent over, we asked Puma if we could do a small run in real shark skin and Bob and Mark hooked up some samples. The weird thing when we saw the shark was that the leather had gone black in the curing process, and I mean deep inky black, not charcoal. And the texture is unlike anything you have ever seen, the only material I can compare it to is elephant hide. Once we realised it was jet black, it demanded a second colour-way, so out popped the second shoe and soon as I saw it, I knew it was gold. It just doesn't look like anything else. The turquoise isn't really a reference to our Snkr Frkr house colours, it just worked with the overall scheme and the popping fluoro pink I might add, is a sampling error that we all loved here in the office so we elected to let it live. Again, at the time, fluoro wasn't about, and now it's a little overplayed but what isn't these days? I think it’s neat, it certainly looks a little weird where it is placed and I like that. Unfortunately the shark will only be produced in very small numbers and we will be giving away most of ours, but if you check Sneaker Freaker you'll find a way to win at least one pair!
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