Renowned sneaker designer Selehe Bembury has announced a new brand partnership this week. Adding to the long list of brands that have turned to him for his unique designs and expertise, he will help with the design of a new PUMA Basketball shoe, coming sometime in 2025.
Salehe Bembury is likely the current reigning independent sneaker designer. A New York native, the creative attended Syracuse University to study footwear design, designing sneakers for Payless after his graduation. From there, he moved on to work on Cole Haan shoes during their Nike-owned era, producing the LunarGrand model that combined the Swoosh’s best cushioning with a brogue dress shoe upper. Next, he was hired by the Yeezy team to work on their silhouette, producing a number of our favorites from the Season 3 & 4 collections, as well as aiding on other now-famous adidas Yeezy products.
His next career move is perhaps the biggest, signing on to work with Versace as their vice president of sneakers, directly overseeing anything the luxury brand releases. At the same time, he began to expand his portfolio as an independent designer, starting off by releasing collaborations with New Balance before moving on to team up with Vans and Crocs for a number of projects. Now, he’s announced his next step: teaming up with PUMA.
The German footwear giant and Bembury announced this week that he would be joining their design team to work on future performance products in the basketball category. While little is known about the work right now, he’s been seen in Paris the last few days sporting a custom pair of the Nitro silhouette with a modified sole unit that mimics his signature fingerprint pattern. This pair has been seen in all white and a red and yellow mix, though it is unclear if these are production samples or simply a personal wear test for himself.
Salehe Bembury’s latest venture in the sneaker world has not been announced for release yet, or even given a solid timeline for us to pay attention to. The announcement of his new deal simply states that he will join the PUMA design team to apply his unique and signature patterns to their latest basketball footwear, which we expect to see release sometime in 2025. Either way, stay tuned to JustFreshKicks for more sneaker news, like Bembury’s next signature shoe with Crocs, the Juniper.
