Puma Suede Vintage 'WTFormstrip - Intense Red Sweet Grape'
Colorway: Intense Red/Sweet Grape/Intense Blue · Style code: 382657-02 · Release date: September 5, 2021 · Price: $2452 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Puma Suede Vintage 'WTFormstrip - Peyote China Blue' (382657-01)
Three saturated colours and a name built around the side stripe tell you where the attention is meant to land. Intense red, sweet grape purple and intense blue divide the upper, and the WTFormstrip series treats the brand's marking as the subject of the design rather than as trim. Puma released the shoe on September 5, 2021 at 100 dollars, well above a standard pair from the same season.
That marking has identified the company's shoes for decades, predating this silhouette by some years, and it is the single element that makes a pair recognisable at a glance. Building a series around exaggerating it is a reasonable idea, and the three-colour palette is loud enough to make the point stick. Whether it is wearable is a separate question: red, purple and blue on one upper leaves very little room for anything else in an outfit, and the shoe works best with plain black or indigo. Underneath it all, the Vintage spec holds the shoe to its original proportions, which stops the whole thing tipping into novelty.