When sports brands collaborate with fashion labels, it’s a statement of intent for both participants. The sports brand is making a statement about how forward thinking they are, while the fashion label is showing their versatility and accessibility. It’s always good to see something interesting and special happen when these two worlds collide.
This season, German sportswear giant PUMA has tapped Polish upstart label UEG, and the results are genuinely exciting. Taking silhouettes from PUMA’s basketball archive, UEG's founder/designer Michał Łojewski has inserted his aesthetic and vision and created a collection that spans footwear and apparel. Working with UEG’s signature monochrome aesthetic and combination of technical and experimental fabrics, the collection plays with themes of space and ambition, underlining the ‘Gravity Resistant’ theme.
The collection spans apparel and footwear, with four PUMA sneaker silhouettes taking on the identity of UEG, presented in mixed fabrications and bold monochrome colourways. The clothes are of a similar vein, taking the sportswear influence and prowess of PUMA and inserting UEG's experimental ethos and penchant for text-as-part-of-design and ending up with something really, really great.
We headed to Poland to meet with Łojewski at the launch of the collaboration and spoke about the collaboration, the history of UEG and Warsaw’s creative scene. Scroll to see what he had to say.
The PUMA x UEG collection will be available from select retailers and the PUMA and UEG webstores from September 24.