Together with Tony Bertone and Gavin Ivester, I led material design, color and trend direction to relaunch Puma in the early aughts. Our brand concept relied on a bold reframing of 'sport for fashion' that focused not on the culture of athletics, which was well covered in the market, but was instead inspired by juxtaposing iconic cultural movements together such as grass-roots movements in Jamaican reggae music, street art and experimental fashion.
Our creative stories and designs were a melange of performance cues and street fashion influences, mixing materials and colors in unexpected ways, with signaling and dimensionalizing patterns across multiple products and categories. It was a very exciting time to be at Puma as we challenged the tactile language and visual vernacular of leading edge innovation, whether it was specialized performance equipment, frontier fashion or dynamic brand collaborations.
The sneaker industry provided a unique arena to explore a broad range of creative concepts. I subsequently drove Puma's Design Ethos into designer brand collaborations for Nuala by Christy Turlington, Philippe Starck, Alexander McQueen, Mihara Yasuhiro and the 96HR Capsule Collection which was the first cross-disciplinary collection of its kind for footwear, apparel and accessories.
