Beneath the Surface: the Reawakening of the PUMA Mostro
FENTY x PUMA
The year is 1999: it’s the cusp of the millennium and optimism is in the air. Our imaginations have run away with us, sci-fi movies are all the rage, and sneaker design is getting more futuristic by the minute. Deep in the depths of design division, Peter Schmid has embarked on his latest quest. Tasked with increasing traction within the trail shoe category, he ends up creating a shoe unlike anything seen before – one that cannot be defined by existing sports categories. By fusing two unlikely models, he births the PUMA . A near-instant hit, it surpasses all the company’s expectations.
As with all things fashion, success can’t last forever. The peaks and troughs of trends are cyclical, and as the sneakersphere moved on, the Mostro was recalled to the archive for safekeeping. However, 25 years later, the silhouette is ready to awaken from its cryogenic slumber. After being thawed out last year when it was worn by the likes of A$AP Rocky and Skepta and served as a muse for PUMA’s collaboration with high fashion brand , FENTY x PUMA.
Frankenstein's Monster Is Born
As futuristic as it seemed back then, the PUMA Mostro was the product of two PUMA relics. It was a cross between an 80s surf shoe and a Sprint Spike from the 60s, the former pitched by the archive’s Helmut Fischer (aka Mr PUMA), who showed the shoe to Schmid and simply asked him to ‘do something cool with it’. The combination would be considered odd by just about anyone, but the resulting Mostro was an avant-garde statement of design that was perfectly positioned to take on the turn of the millennium. To celebrate their novel creation, the Big Cat even made sure the silhouette’s name embraced its bizarre breeding – the name Mostro is derived from the Italian word for ‘monster’.
Boasting a slim, low profile and a series of distinctive design choices, there’s no denying the Mostro was visually ahead of its time, and it encapsulated the future-forward, hopeful thinking of the era. It was characterised by its form-fitting, almost wrap-around upper, off-centre Velcro strap and its dimpled sole unit. Even though this seemed like a risk at the time, the resulting OG Mostro wasn’t as loud and aggressive-looking as Schmid had originally imagined. Instead, PUMA toned down some of the early features of the model, shaving the spiked sole into flatter lugs in an effort to make the shoe more commercially viable.
That being said, the Mostro nearly didn’t make it. ‘I remember in those conversations a few years later when we had a chance to talk with [Fischer], the product was close to not making it to the market,’ says PUMA’s Director of Innovation, Romain Girard. ‘To be commercially relevant in a system like PUMA or in other companies, you need a certain quantity to go to the market to make sure. And there were barely any orders because it was so weird.’
However, given the brand’s rapidly growing traction within the lifestyle market, PUMA’s c-suite decided to take a punt on the shoe. ‘Back then there was not a high level of validation in science, but simply a couple of business people saying “it's an interest, let's try”. The forecast just happened and they're like, okay, “let's get it out” and it sold out. Next season, double the units came out – it sold out. Next season, double, sold out and it kept on going like this.’
Given the success of its early launch, PUMA continued to push the limits of the OG Mostro. Before long, the shoe had evolved into multiple variations, including the NuMostro, Ur Mostro, and the knee-high Mostro Alto. The Ur, which launched in 2004, was actually more inline with what the designer had originally imagined, with an aggressive stance and spiked sole – a feature that’s been carried through to today’s version.
Alongside its evolving silhouette, PUMA also recognised the Mostro as the perfect canvas for experimenting with different materials. Soon enough, the Mostro was prepped for year-round wear, available to buy in just about every material under the sun. Reflecting on the earlier pairs, PUMA Archive Manager Tung Hoang says, ‘I think the initial plan with the Mostro was to explore the zeitgeist really well, and then expand on it. You want to get everyone's tastes essentially, but then also just experiment. You obviously have your classic materials like the synthetic leather, mesh, suede, nubuck, but then they were also just experimenting with the likes of Ripstop and synthetics that haven't been in the footwear industry in that segment for that long.’ As the shoe continued to gain popularity among the masses, this breadth of materials became both a testament to the versatility of the shoe and an active exercise in pushing the Mostro’s boundaries. As more modified versions dropped, the Mostro’s fanbase also grew – no matter your taste, there was a Mostro (or two or three) for everybody.
90s, baby!
The 90s sneaker scene was caught up on technical advancements and still largely saw sneakers designed for sport, but despite its origins as an early trail running experiment, the Mostro trod the line between both fitness and fashion. The design was so different to anything other brands were producing at the time that the Mostro essentially carved out its own lane.
The Big Cat’s place within the fashion industry is not to be sniffed at. Back in 1998, the brand pioneered the high-low link-up formula by pairing up with Jil Sander on the Jil Sander King. Again, this involved a blend between two sports silhouettes: the King football boot, as worn by Brazilian legend Pelé, and the Easy Rider, PUMA’s revered jogging shoe. Echoing the Mostro’s comeback, it was the Jil Sander King that served as the inspiration for the mighty Mostro is back to reclaim its stake in the sneaker scene – proof that PUMA’s archive is bursting with styles that still stand up today. In 2005, PUMA also teamed up with Alexander McQueen on their ‘Anatomical Vein’ sneaker. Its design language can be easily traced back to the Mostro.
Couple PUMA’s positioning with the Mostro’s futuristic appearance and it’s no surprise that the shoe played a part in pioneering the sportstyle category – which has gone from strength to strength over the past couple of years. The emergence of this category also set the tone for the rise of other PUMA silhouettes, such as the and the Sprint, which were both early noughties hits from the style’s aesthetic lineage.
As it turns out, the inability to define the Mostro’s function as a sports shoe was its biggest blessing. While PUMA hadn’t predicted huge sales numbers for the style, they went on to sell millions of them – it swept the streets during the early ‘aughts, capturing the hearts and minds of lifestyle consumers and fashion fans alike. Its cultural pull even extended to the celebsphere: Madonna famously sported the Mostro off the back of her 2001 Drowned world tour, and Bjork was photographed in a pair of gold Mostro Alto Boots (the latter inspired somewhat of a warm-up round in the form of an Ottolinger colab last October). The NuMostro was even featured in the 2005 film The Island, (a dystopian sci-fi thriller set in – wait for it – 2019) where it was worn by Scarlett Johansson. But beyond that, the Mostro had cemented itself as a shoe with serious mass appeal – it was a shoe that anyone could wear, from fashion’s finest to the orthopaedic shoe community.
Back to the Future
As the 2000s gave way to new designs and technology, the Mostro’s popularity began to wane and the silhouette was quietly put to bed. It was awoken in 2017 and given a bit of a facelift, ostracism its slim build while toning down its stand-out textured sole unit. At that point in time, the sneaker scene was moving towards chunky, dad-style sneakers, and the 2017 Mostro failed to take off.
Though platformed soles and overblown proportions may have been all the rage during the Mostro’s last rollout, there’s been a noticeable shift away from chunky sneakers over the past couple of years. Most recently, retro 80s styles have dominated the scene, and terrace sneakers in particular have swayed people towards slim silhouettes. Two or three years into the trend, most consumers have now regained the confidence to style flatter soles and lower profile silhouettes. Couple this with the booming Y2K aesthetic and burgeoning interest in archival sneakers, and it's clear that PUMA are onto a winner.
‘I think people want new things,’ explains Adam Pieters, Director of Product Line Management for PUMA’s Sportstyle Footwear Division. ‘I was with the team in LA last year and we were walking through stores and there was nothing new. I had the feeling that people were already like, ok, what is the next thing? The trends are moving so quickly. It's like a whirlwind. And I think we just came in at the right time, especially in Asia where people are really trying vintage stores. So we knew people were just looking for something weird – like from the 2000s. For us it's not new, but for them it is.’
It’s a sentiment shared by the Big Cat’s Global Creative Director and Innovation Lead, Heiko Desens. ‘What I'm observing is that the younger consumer is dropping out of the macro cycle of trends. So the last 10-15 years was really about a uniformed look of the sneaker industry. Everyone did more or less the same. They were two–three big things dominating for a very long time. And that was the currency, that’s what young people wanted to be, they wanted to be uniformed.
They are not conforming to this uniform look anymore. It's more about individualism. It's more about creativity. It's about mixing thrift with designer, with self-made graphics and stuff that is more relevant for them. The individualistic styling takes the lead for a younger consumer. And this is what I mean. We have the chance of having all these underdog shoes in the pipeline, which do not conform to this look. They're weird. They're weird as hell. And that's PUMA.’
It Lives!
In what feels like a fitting return to form, the Mostro’s comeback took place as a side project for the design team – you could call it another experiment of sorts. The team was still subject to the usual lead times, but it had become clear that they had to be reactive in order to nail the timing. ‘I think a lot of times PUMA would maybe sit back and think “ok, is this really happening?” and then we would've been late,’ Pieters says. ‘This was done by the team on the side because they literally said to us “no, this is happening.”’
In addition, the 2024 Mostro has managed to retain all its early 00s charm. For the team, it was important to create a version that celebrated its DNA, which is why you’ll find the OG’s upper combined with the sole from the Ur. As mentioned, the Ur was the Mostro as Schmid intended – the German prefix Ur loosely translates to the ‘original’ or ‘point of beginning’ – and you’ll find the 2024 version comes complete with that spiky sole unit.
‘I think everything we tried to do was extremely authentic to us and we really wanted to be authentic to our archive,’ explains Benjamin Lamprey, who heads up the sportstyle design team. ‘When we came to the Mostro, we looked into our archive and we worked with other partners like Ottolinger. And when we started to look at all of the Mostro styles that we've done, there was a lot of variation and it was kind of like, what is the best version of this we can do for today? I think when you look at the shoe now, it's a little bit more aggressive. We've made the spikes a little bit more spiky and upped the comfort aspect, but we are still staying pretty true to what it looked like back in 2000.’
There’s something poetic about the new Mostro being a hybrid in itself, but it also goes to show just how good each variation was, with each evolution managing to stand the test of time. However, that’s not all PUMA has planned for the Mostro over the next few years. This is a silhouette that the Big Cat will use to continue pushing boundaries.‘You can go in so many directions [with the Mostro],’ says Jan Kessel, Senior Product Line Manager for PUMA Sportstyle. ‘You can go very OG-driven and try to reissue all materials from the past, but then you can go super experimental and explore modern materials that cater to a current trend as well. It's also so fun to see the design team that actually would wear the shoe becoming so excited about it. That makes my job very easy in a way, because they bring in so many ideas and I just need to pick the best one.’
The Mostro is the obvious answer to the pocket of weirdness in the current zeitgeist, as it is slim, techy, functional, and drips with cultural relevance. Those who grew up with the early-aughts version will be instantly familiar with the silhouette, whereas the new, fashion-conscious consumer will find it an exciting and unique-looking new style. The 2024 Mostro has already been spotted on the feet of key tastemakers, but more importantly, it will continue to challenge our perceptions of what sneakers can look like, in turn influencing design for years to come.