#5: Puma Shadow Society States

In 2001 Puma formed the Shadow Society, a secret sneaker society that resembled the freemasons, but for footwear. With it’s members kept top secret, we were left only to guess wildly who could possibly be in the society of hugely influential sneaker heads. The concept was simple – create a small, secret society who will be given complete creative control over their sneaker releases.

The result was the Shadow Society Puma States, dropped over three parts of 2011 in pairs, with this featured pair being in the first drop. Each pair came with it’s own extra laces and luxe lace bag. The real beauty of this release was the name given to the shoe. This is a Puma Suede, as you most likely have noticed, but back in the 80′s when the Suedes crossed the pond from their original birthplace to our shores they were called States as a reference to their home turf. The Shadow Society took us back into the depths of Pumas history with this release, paying homage to a unique connection between us Brits and America via this German company.

A lot of people went wild for this mini series, especially the Puma Suede fans and especially for this exact colourway. There has been no mention of future Shadow Society drops, it may well have been an exclusive project to 2011, but then again we were never informed of the project until 10 days before the first drop. We can but hope.