When it comes to collaborations, impact and engagement are a major part of the appeal.
But that isn't where their true value lies. The real thrill emerges where a brand's
accumulated expertise meets a fresh idea that cuts right through the familiar.
An encounter like this, between legacy and disruption, is what makes co-creation compelling.
The first collaboration between Graphpaper and PUMA carries this intention quietly beneath the surface.
From the conversation between Takayuki Minami and Mr. Nozaki of PUMA Japan, the unique trajectory of PUMA's collaborative ventures, and where they stand today, comes sharply into focus.

Interview & Text by Rui Konno

―Before we get into the collaboration itself, I think it would be good to properly introduce you, Nozaki.

Takayuki Minami (Minami below): When I first met the PUMA team, they introduced him to me by saying, "Nozaki knows PUMA's background better than anyone."

Heisuke Nozaki (Nozaki below): Yes, that's how it started. When we met at PUMA House.

Minami: I said, "I want to see as much of PUMA's archive as possible," which was a pretty unreasonable request, and then Nozaki even brought some of his own personal pieces and showed them to me at PUMA House. He was explaining things like, "This one comes from this kind of historical context…"

―So in a way, your role is almost like a historian.

Nozaki: I've been in charge of trade marketing for three years now, but before that I was at PUMA House doing PR, so I often talked about the brand's history and its products. Maybe I'm still carrying some of that with me (laughs).

Minami: So when they said, "Let's do a talk," I immediately felt it had to be with Nozaki.

―I see. Then could you first tell us how this collaboration came about?

Minami: I remember this super flat… you'd call it a low-profile style, right? That kind of shoe appeared around 2000, and I knew about it back then. When I saw the model called SPEEDCAT PLUS, it felt nostalgic. So when the opportunity came up for us to do a collaboration with PUMA, I thought it could be really interesting to work on that shoe. When we brought it up to PUMA, they said, "We'd love to do that."

Nozaki: I actually really wanted to hear that part myself. At the start, you were speaking with our MD and sales teams, so I didn't know how the project began.

Minami: Right. And the theme of our collection at the time was "Arrangement" - collaging and combining different things. So we arrived at the idea that, while the shoe might look like a single solid color at first glance, what if we changed every material on it?

―So you switched between suede, nubuck, and smooth leather in the same tone.

Minami: Exactly. The original SPEEDCAT PLUS had a sporty color blocking, so I felt that doing the complete opposite would actually look better. My imagination was that even within one color, the subtle nuances would shift depending on the material, and that would be interesting. In the end it turned out even better than I'd envisaged, and came out with a strong sense of refinement.
Nozaki: To tell the truth, the SPEEDCAT PLUS that we used as the base this time doesn't have an original vintage version. It's a brand new style for 2025.

Minami: It's similar to the SPEEDCAT P, but still different, right?

Nozaki: Yes, it's different again. But at the same time it feels strangely familiar. Right now, younger kids are wearing the regular SPEEDCAT, but of course they don't know that era. They're buying it with a sense of "Somehow this is great," or "It's attractive," which feels very strange to me. I lived through that period, so I experience it as nostalgic.

―There's a sense of continuity there - from when American basketball and running sneakers were dominant, into the rise of European football shoes and that specific kind of sports nuance.

Nozaki: Exactly. The inline SPEEDCAT PLUS is much sportier, but Graphpaper has made it clean and ideal for adults with a one-tone finish. If PUMA made it on our own, I think the colors would have ended up a lot more striking.> Left : PUMA Speedcat Plus / Right : PUMA × Graphpaper Speedcat Plus GRAPHPAPER

―When the starting point is pure sport, the idea of making it one-tone doesn't present itself so easily, does it?

Minami: No, not really. Not if you think about it from a standard perspective.

Nozaki: Right. We always tend to want to add color to the Formstrip or lines (laughs). This is a catalogue from 2001, by the way…

Minami: Wow. You actually have this? From when the SPEEDCAT came out?
> PUMA 2001 Catalogue

Nozaki: Yes, from the launch. The shoes shown on the very first page are the pro-spec models that actual F1 racers wore. From the following pages, you get into the lifestyle replicas. The low-cut version of those is the original source for the current SPEEDCAT.

Minami: At that time there were a lot of driving shoes like this, weren't there?

Nozaki: Indeed there were. PUMA started its motorsport category in 1998, but at first nothing was sold at retail - we began by supplying gear for Williams Racing. That's where development started.

Minami: I didn't know that.

Nozaki: Yes. And then in 2001 we finally introduced lifestyle shoes and motorsport gear for the general market. Around a few years prior, there was a period when sports and fashion started moving closer together. In particular, the 1998 collaboration with Jil Sander was huge, and I feel like that really changed the tide. We began challenging areas like motorsport - fields no other brand had really touched.

Minami: That makes sense.

Nozaki: By around 2000, things changed dramatically - it became an era of panelled design, and many low-profile sneakers came out. Models like the MOSTRO and the SPRINT. SPEEDCAT is very much a shoe of that era.

Minami: The PUMA you're wearing today is the JJJJound one, right?

Nozaki: Yes. It's the MOSTRO from the JJJJound collaboration. The original MOSTRO was released in 2000. Back then, PUMA headhunted a footwear designer named Peter Schmidt from Donna Karan, and this is one of the models he created.

―So even then, PUMA was actively seeking that kind of designer expertise.

Nozaki: I think so. The head of PUMA at that time, Jochen Zeitz, started at the company and worked his way up to CEO. He was very quick to initiate collaborations not only with fashion and sports, but even with completely different industries.

Minami: PUMA was really ahead on that front. Maybe the earliest of all? You worked with Philippe Starck too, right?

Nozaki: We did. We made slip-ons under the theme "less is more." Before that, the collaboration with Mihara Yasuhiro bridged the domestic and global market. We were really doing all kinds of things. I was in sales at that time, so I experienced a lot first-hand.

Minami: Sneaker collaborations with fashion brands are now something everyone does as a matter of course, but PUMA really was the pioneer, wasn't it?

Nozaki: I think so. More recently we've done things like Balenciaga, and this project with Graphpaper, and I'd love to carry that into the next phase.

Minami: Even so, the collaboration with Jil Sander was outstanding. It still looks great now.

Nozaki: Apparently Jil Sander herself approached PUMA saying, "I want to make a boxing shoe with a beautiful silhouette." So it seems she had always been looking for an unobtrusive sole. Did you buy those at the time, Mr. Minami?

Minami: I found a pair as vintage and brought them back. In the Netherlands. I think the model was KING? The one where you don't fold the tongue.

Nozaki: That would be the 2006 one. In good condition and in men's sizes - those almost never appear.

Minami: When I found them I thought, "Whoa!" and bought them immediately. For about 100 euros.

Nozaki: I still want the Jil Sander PUMA myself.

―I saw your pair, Minami, and the leather had beautiful character. Speaking of leather - the leather on the Graphpaper SPEEDCAT PLUS also feels different from the main line version, doesn't it?

Nozaki: Yes, we used higher-grade leather than on the main line versions. In particular, the nubuck - where the grain side is deliberately processed - is a material we almost never use in our core collection. Matching different materials in a single tone is quite difficult, but our development team put a lot of care into it. They worked to minimize any color shifting, while still bringing out each material's characteristic.

Minami: I really appreciate that. Personally, I get the feeling that nubuck leather and PUMA shoes are a very good match. I've actually proposed some other ideas using nubuck as well.

―I think the color is exceptional too. How did you decide on this greyish beige?Minami: Greige is one of the colors in this collection. We've made many sneakers up to now, but we'd never done this kind of one-tone in such a shade, so my first thought was simply that it could be interesting.

Nozaki: It feels very fresh. I don't recall ever seeing a greige one-tone sneaker before, and then to execute it entirely in natural leather… Today, with most brands, a thin base leather sprayed with polyurethane is still labeled as "genuine leather", but this really uses leather that preserves its original character. On top of that, PUMA's leather is also processed with consideration for the environment.

Minami: Is that so?

Nozaki: Yes. We use LWG-certified leather, which ensures environmental responsibility and product safety.

Minami: I didn't know that. But when I was in Europe this time, I really felt that everywhere you go, people are aware of these issues. Even T-shirts for wine shop merch are made from organic cotton - it feels like that kind of thing has been completely absorbed into the culture. To be honest, Japan is quite behind in that area.

Nozaki: Over there it's simply viewed as common sense. PUMA's head office in Germany, for example, covers all the electricity for their own offices with solar power. I think Europe is especially forward-thinking in that regard.

Minami: That's the kind of thing that interests me as design. Not just "we have to think about the environment", but the design of generating their own electricity, thinking about emissions, and building a system that circulates these things.

―In Japan, environmental awareness still tends to be used as a promotional tool.

Minami: I think people feel a sense of dissonance because it hasn't yet been fully translated into design. Now that I'm traveling abroad more again, I think about that a lot. I feel like I've been shown that incorporating such concerns into making things is interesting - that it's a creative act.

―The order of priorities is also smart - good design first, with an ethical background underpinning it.

Minami: Exactly. That's what matters at the start. With this project, when the first sample arrived, I immediately thought, "Oh, this is great."

Nozaki: When I asked the development manager, they said, "We really focused on the leather color when we ordered the sample", but even then, getting this tone right in a single try is impressive.

―It sounds like there were a lot of invisible efforts behind the scenes.

Minami: It was literally the first sample, but we felt, "There's nothing to fix - this is it." Until the sample arrives you can't be sure, and honestly, if it comes out looking weak, you have to be prepared to drop the project. If you can't redo it many times, then sometimes you just can't release it. And yet this one was approved in one go.

Nozaki: I'm really glad it turned out that way (laughs).

―(Laughs) Hearing all this, I have to say I was a little surprised that you, Minami, had such a specific image and attachment toward PUMA as a brand.

Minami: I think I was heavily influenced by Jil Sander from early on. By the designer, Jil Sander herself. I feel like she was the one who first brought brands like Patagonia into a high-fashion context, and when I look at archive books and so on, I'm always reminded how much I like her minimal sensibility. For me, PUMA's entry point was Jil Sander.

Nozaki: The partnership with Jil Sander lasted a long time. Probably around ten years.

Minami: Aside from that, I also like things like the SUEDE and the CLYDE, the pairs worn by music people, but for me those are tied too strongly to the image of the Beastie Boys. I feel like with those, it's better not to over-modernize them - just keep them as they are.

Nozaki: A lot of people say that. "This is a shoe where you really don't need to do anything extra" (laughs).

Minami: Exactly. But these driving-type shoes felt truly innovative at the time. Even so, I had never actually worn them myself, so when the idea of doing something together as Graphpaper came up, my only worry was whether the balance would work with our clothes. But once we built the outfits, they fit right in - and actually created silhouettes that felt fresh and different from our usual.

Nozaki: They sit really nicely with wide pants as well.

Minami: Yes. It almost feels like a dress shoe. Partly because it's unified in one color, but it looked especially good in women's styling.

Nozaki: The styling in the visual shoot you took had a great aesthetic - and very appealing.

Minami: It works with skirts, with dresses - it's surprisingly easy to match with all sorts of things.


Nozaki: After we received the visuals and posted them on Instagram, some of our global colleagues reached out saying, "Can't I buy this too?" They had no idea something like this was happening out of Japan, and it seems even internally people were pleasantly shocked by the result (laughs).

―In the sense of realizing ideas that wouldn't have been born solely in-house, this really feels like collaboration in the best sense.

Nozaki: I agree. Hearing that Minami's image of PUMA began with Jil Sander makes everything fall into place. It makes perfect sense that this SPEEDCAT PLUS came from that starting point.

Minami: If it were just, "We changed the color a bit", that wouldn't be satisfying. It wouldn't generate any new chemistry for PUMA or for us.

Nozaki: I feel like this is a shoe that still won't look dated even three years from now. If anything, it seems like the kind of pair you maintain like a leather shoe, growing more attached to it as you wear it. It feels like a collaboration you can live with for a long time.

PUMA × Graphpaper
Speedcat Plus GRAPHPAPER

Heisuke Nozaki
Trade Marketing Manager, PUMA Japan

Born in 1971, raised in downtown Tokyo. One of the members who has watched over PUMA's journey in Japan for 30 years, from before PUMA Japan was even established. His favorite sneaker will always be the PUMA SUEDE.