Puma Roma OG Nylon 'Whisper White Black'
Colorway: Whisper White/Black/Whisper White · Style code: 362408-28 · Release date: May 13, 2021 · Price: $75 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Puma Roma OG Nylon 'White Black' (362408-06) · Puma Roma OG Nylon 'White Ponderosa Pine' (362408-12) · Puma Roma OG Nylon 'White Peacoat' (362408-15) · Puma Roma OG Nylon 'Whisper White Star Sapphire' (362408-21) · Puma Roma OG Nylon 'White Cherry Tomato' (362408-29)
Puma released the Roma in 1968, timed to the European football championship held in Italy that summer, though the shoe itself was built for the track. It was a lightweight trainer aimed at sprints and hurdles, given a thick padded tongue and arch support at a point when most training shoes offered neither.
What kept it in production was not athletics. Through the 1970s the Roma moved into everyday wear, and in Britain it was picked up by football casuals in the 1980s and again by guitar bands in the 1990s, each group treating it as an ordinary shoe rather than as sportswear.
Puma has reissued it repeatedly since. This nylon version returns to the material the earliest models used, in white with a black formstrip and trim, on the same low flat profile the shoe has always had. A commercial life of more than fifty years with almost no change to the design is rare enough to be worth stating plainly.