MCM x Puma Suede 'Whisper White'
Colorway: Whisper White/Puma Black · Style code: 366299-02 · Release date: May 24, 2018 · Price: $996 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: MCM x Puma Suede 'Buckthorn Brown' (366299-01) · Puma MCM x Suede Classic 'MCM' (366299-03)
Luxury leather goods meet a 1968 sport shape in this collaboration. MCM, short for Modern Creation Munich, has traded on monogrammed leather since 1976, and its contribution here is twofold: a tumbled leather treatment on the quarter panel and the house Cognac Visetos print, the logo-stamped material the brand is best known for, used against a whisper white base. Puma priced the pair at 340 dollars and released it on May 24, 2018, which put it far above anything else wearing this silhouette that year.
The interesting part is what the two brands did not change. The proportions, the Formstrip and the low cup sole are all left alone, so the shoe still reads as the 1968 original at ten paces and only reveals the monogram and the grain up close. That restraint is why the pair has aged better than most designer sneaker tie-ins of the late 2010s, a period when the standard move was to inflate the sole and pile on branding. White leather and a cognac-brown print also make for an unusually wearable luxury colourway, since neither element fights the other for attention.