Coperni and PUMA Turned a Football Boot into a Dress Shoe – HIGHSNOBIETY
Sat 30 Sep
Words by JAKE SILBERT
Curious what the future of shoes looks like? Coperni and PUMA’s collaborative shoe is it. Both familiar and utterly alien, the sneaker recalls Coperni’s fantastically entertaining runway shows where cutting-edge tech melds with clothing design of the here and now.
Coperni and PUMA’s debut sneaker thus looks like something from then, now, and later, translating inspiration from the past into a shoe so incredibly of the moment that it’s ahead of its time.
"[The Coperni x PUMA shoe] is constructed exactly like a football boot but looks like a dress shoe."
Heiko Desens, PUMA's Global Creative Director
Forget day-to-night dressing: in a few centuries, we'll all be wearing Coperni's PUMA shoes from the football pitch to dinner rehearsals.
The unnamed Coperni x PUMA sneaker "is constructed exactly like a football boot but looks like a dress shoe," Heiko Desens, PUMA's Global Creative Director, told Highsnobiety. "The shoes live in the future. Our vision of futuristic tech, this product and the engineering behind it look towards the future."
Coperni creative director Sébastien Meyer and CEO Arnaud Vaillant concur, though they also point to influence from the similarly prescient Mostro, one of their favorite PUMA shoes, and the PUMA Future boot.
"We love the fusion of futuristic elements into a design that remains entirely wearable."
Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant
Bear in mind that this is no mere collab. Coperni is only the second fashion brand to effectively create its own signature PUMA shoe.
"The shoes are inspired by movement and brutalist architecture," they said. "We love the fusion of futuristic elements into a design that remains entirely wearable. The shoes are mainly designed with straight lines, which is very unexpected for a pair of sneakers."
Unexpected indeed. Coperni and PUMA created a sneaker untethered from time, a low-top shoe with a minimalist outsole that looks like a football boot sans spikes.