An interview with
J. Haeberle
former Puma Apparel Designer
[A note from Andro1dGirl: We've had a few incredible opportunities to chat with J all the way in Amsterdam, through the beauty of videochat. The below is a summarised version of J's story working with Puma in J's own words, with a heavy focus on the Mostro apparel line.]
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AG: Could you tell us a little bit about how you started at Puma, and what department you worked with?
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JH: Oh dear, that is going back a long way and it is actually a funny story:
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After my graduation from a fashion design uni in the south of Germany I moved to London in 1999. Back then my taste levels were rather loud and as I already started early days in retail, then buying, then with designing footwear in the early 90s. Despite having studied fashion design, my passion went into designing smaller pieces of visible layers, i.e. footwear. My taste was toooo loud to apply this to apparel and bigger surfaces.
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Back then I worked a little with Errolson Hugh on Gravis footwear plus did some design for Royal Elastics, the first slip on footwear brand belonging to Tull Price and Rodney Adler. With Errolson we had nice play and it was around the time (Note: pre digital) when Royal Elastics became big with collaborations like the Metallheadz( Goldie).
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However, I did a lot of footwear concepts back then, not finding my way into apparel. By 2002, I became a bit tired of London and the survival mode and Puma was the only commercial sport brand that did decent footwear so I decided to send them a blind application. A shoe that came in a gridded surface and the grid contained not only one branding but the one of Puma, Adidas and Asics. Hidden in the grind and customisable by the end consumer. Having been invited for an interview, I didn’t realise that I went for an apparel interview, got there with my footwear folio and how it happened I got a job as "designer unspecified” in apparel. They liked how I was thinking. In my interview my future boss and his boss actually still smoked and were potentially more nervous than me as they must have smoked a pack of 20 together during a 2 hour interview. I started a couple of months later in this tiny 50SQM top floor room that was the designers location and learned my way through a tight team (consisting of 10 people in apparel incl. graphic designers) of what it takes to design for the likes of Footlocker and the so called "separate collections" - random stuff that made the company money.
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Simply bored with this commercial tick-the-box and paint-by-numbers approach and stuck in Herzo, (my BF was still living in London and I had plenty of time to kill) I decided to do some extra time and simply took the Sprint silhouette and formulated a recipe for a track jacket. Then took on the Mostro and directed it to an approach similar to the Sprint, called in my boss back then (Satish Tailor, now heading up Vollebak) showed him my concepts - which he approved to support - and called in my counterparts of footwear (Brad Lacey, now heading up New Balance) and we were ready and set to go. He believed in me and these concepts. I received a “secret project" call from the president of apparel, Alden Sheets, and I got to choose one of my developers to support... and so it was born!
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Hidden from all we developed the items, made a presentation and showed it as a surprise at an international sales meeting: footwear inspired apparel for Puma with an out of the box approach.
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[Puma ANTITASTE line, portfolio images from J. Haeberle]
Then other projects followed; ANTITASTE a collection inspired by old footballers items from the 80s (think Rudi Voeller and bad primary colours on 1005 polyester plastics) featuring parkas, low crutch pants and bodysuits. More seasons followed - the Klim project is where it began to fail as these collections started to be briefed, excelled up, forced in and this approach was managed by an infinite number of people ever after.
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However back then Puma was amazingly open. They hired ex-Apple creative directors, teamed up with Hollywood, avoided collaborations... found other ways to market themselves.
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It was a company just getting out of the slumps. They took risks. They hired the youngest CEO ever (Jochen Zeitz, 38 at that time) and gave designers crazy briefs when sent on design camps (a yearly meeting of all Puma designers in a random spot somewhere in the world). Briefs became like: "Designers on LSD, go away for a week and come back with 8 commercializable yet aspirational collection ideas".
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Puma in my humble point of view started to become the “different” brand to what was out there, Sports lifestyle was defined and owned.
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20 years later, I can state that this was the best corporate job I ever had and that kept me going. It was different. It was more “just do it”, as my then following job after Puma was with the Swoosh (Nike).
AG: How did you get involved in the Mostro clothing line project? Was it designed to be released alongside the original run of the shoes, or did it come later after the first initial success?
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JH: The Mostro was actually a shoe that was already existing when I started at Puma in 2002. However, it was one of those footwear items that was crazy different, it actually stood on the shelves for two years as not one country wanted to buy into it. Until the upper Puma management decided to make this a compulsory buy for every country within the Puma distribution family. It worked.
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AG: What were your inspirations for the Mostro jacket? What approach did you initially take?
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JH: The project as said was solely self initiated and my background in footwear prior to my job at Puma got me doing that.
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The Approach:
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1] Dissect the shoe.
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2] Take its most important parts: closure, grip, outsole, tabs.
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3]fabric iterations - amplify these elements and string them together functionally into a nicely cut contemporary silhouette.
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We just started with F1 and Motosport, so it was designed to be reminiscent of a modern Motorsport inspired silhouette. Perforated material to keep it light (like the foot pedal in a race car). Masculine colours to embrace the stealthy attitude.
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AG: Do you have any favourite shoes or items you worked on with Puma, or any stories you’d like to share from your time there, apart from the Mostro project?
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JQ: Oh dear, I used to be in love with the Yasuhiro Mihara footwear and apparel. We used to meet in person in Japan and I simply love him for his fun and spiel - I like it rather wild and less conservative!
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Asking me for my other puma favourites: I used to go to local Frankonian flea markets and found a shoe that was called “the art of Puma”, a 1993 release of a basketball hi top with crazy graffiti. Just before I left the cat to pursue my swoosh career, I got into a meeting with Mr. Fisher and Mr. Gaensler together with the head of Sales and actually managed together with him to bring this piece back into the select distribution and markets.
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[J also worked on the iconic ANTITASTE, Klim and SPRINT lines. We encourage you to discover more of J's studio Multiple Identities, as this is just one chapter in J's extremely illustrious and amazing design career. We hope you enjoyed some highlights and exclusive portfolio images from J alongside our interview!]