The Speedcat, Rocky tells GQ via email, “is a canvas for me to reimagine through my own creativity,” offering him a chance to “blend true performance engineering and motorsport branding with a gritty lived-in aesthetic.” The shoe starts with a black and red suede upper with an off-white Puma stripe splitting the colors in two. The design really kicks into high gear, however, towards the ultrathin sole. Artificial splatters adorn the bottom of the shoe, a play on the buildup of mud, debris, oil, and burnt rubber a driver is likely to find on their footwear following a race.
There’s also a carbon fiber print on the heel stabilizer, an homage to racing shoes of eras past, as well as double-wrapparound red laces and Rocky’s signature on the Puma-branded tongue. “Rocky loves [the Speedcat’s] origins and has become a real advocate for diving back into the archive and resurfacing the details that made it iconic,” says Jon Tang, Puma design lead on all of Rocky’s projects. “So we went all the way back to the original 1999 catalogs, where the first Speedcat debuted, and began pulling forward the elements that defined it.”
It all adds up to Rocky’s finest work with Puma yet—and yet another feather in the Speedcat’s It-shoe cap. The A$AP Rocky x Puma Speedcat drops for $150 on October 20 at 10 a.m. EST, exclusively via the Puma app.