Puma will launch an eight-piece accessories collection for spring created by Dutch industrial designer Marcel Wanders and unveil a new store prototype this month in Manhattan’s Union Square.
Wanders, whose career spans furniture design to architecture, is best known for the Knot Chair (1996), a macramé chair made out of what appears to be suspended rope.
Antonio Bertone, director of global brand management for the $1.7 billion German sport lifestyle brand, said last week at the Boston Design Center, where Wanders gave a speech, that each Puma store will have a few standing fixtures to allow maximum flexibility in displaying a season’s product. The interior is designed in four modular pieces that take about three days to assemble.
“The concept is the truck drives up with the store, like a shipping crate, on the back of it,” Bertone said, adding he plans to photograph the “unpacking” of one store as if it’s a performance art piece.
Bertone declined to reveal details of the Wanders collaboration, but it will likely involve humor and an unusual use of materials, both hallmarks of Wanders’ career.
The logo for the collaboration is a swirl with a Puma and Wanders’ clown-mask icon leaping out from either side.
It’s another installment in Puma’s tradition of collaboration that started in 1997 when French couturier Xuly Bet cut up old Puma soccer jerseys for dresses. Jil Sander, Philippe Starck, Alexander McQueen and Neil Barrett have all created product for Puma. Marc Jacobs created a bag for Nuala, Puma’s joint venture activewear line with model Christy Turlington.