PUMA Suede Hike Borrows a Hiking Boot’s Hardware and None of Its Sole

PUMA has a Suede for nearly every mood this fall, and the Suede Hike is the one that changes something structural. Wild Fern-Gum arrives October 1, and the shoe underneath the name is not a trail build. It is the same low terrace profile PUMA has been selling since 1968, wearing lacing hardware borrowed off a hiking boot. The entire argument sits in the top two lace rows, which is a stranger place to put an idea than another colorway would have been.

The Suede has been renamed more times than most shoes get reissued. PUMA’s own archive traces it from the CRACK, launched in 1968 ahead of the Mexico City Olympics as the company’s first lifestyle shoe, through the CLYDE, then PUMA STATES, before the world settled on calling it the Suede. The name CRACK came from period slang for a very skilful person, the best player on a team, which was about the highest compliment available at the time.

Two decisions from that first run still govern the shoe. PUMA developed a new sole for the CRACK that was also suitable for basketball, and it chose suede leather because the material took color more easily than smooth leather did. One call made the shoe playable. The other made it endlessly recolorable, and that second trait is what the decades since have been built on. When PUMA signed Walt “Clyde” Frazier in 1971, he asked for a low shoe to play in and a new colorway for every game. The brand could hand him that because of a materials decision made three years earlier. Every seasonal Suede run since has been drawing on the same credit.

Wild Fern-Gum is a pale, almost acidic green with a deep nap, set on a gum midsole and a gum outsole. The laces are round and speckled, green flecked through purple, and they run through conventional eyelets on the lower rows before hitting two metal speed hooks at the throat. PUMA lists the upper as 93.87 percent cow leather and 4.53 percent metal, which is an unusual line to read on a spec sheet from this family. The metal is the speed hooks.

What PUMA has not touched is anything below the eyelets. In the product photography the outsole is the flat, fine-tread gum unit the Suede has always run, not a lug pattern. There is no gusseted tongue, no toe bumper and no rand. The brand’s copy calls the details hiking-inspired, and the photographs agree with that phrasing exactly: the details are inspired, the shoe is not. Width is listed as narrow, the heel is flat, and the branding is the usual Formstrip and heel tab.

PUMA has been working the Suede hard this season. The Never Not run added Midnight Petrol and Silver Fog with no collaborator attached, Daniëlle Cathari wrapped the Formstrip around the entire shoe, and Street Fighter took three characters and split them across three pairs. Those are colorway exercises, which is precisely what the Suede was designed to absorb.

Changing the lacing is a different kind of move. It is the first part of the shoe your hands touch, and it is the one component that has stayed functionally identical across all of those projects. Speed hooks also carry a specific reference, and it points at a category PUMA does not seriously compete in. Read generously, this is the brand testing whether a terrace silhouette can borrow outdoor language without rebuilding anything. Read plainly, it is two pieces of metal and a better lace. Whether that clears the bar depends on how tired you are of the colorway treadmill.

At $130 the Suede Hike sits at the top of PUMA’s general-release Suede band rather than above it. The Madhappy collaboration runs the same $130 and the Suede CODA “Echo Points” matches it, while the Suede Patch and the Charles F. Stead version both land at $120 and the Suede Snake Print sits at $100. So the hardware is carrying no premium at all, which reads as PUMA filing the speed hooks under seasonal makeup rather than special build. A general drop at standard retail is not the shape of a pair anyone should expect to chase.

The PUMA Suede Hike in Wild Fern-Gum releases October 1, with orders opening September 30 at 9 PM PDT. Style code is 407166_01 and retail is $130. It is listed now at PUMA, which has it on the same October 1 date as the Suede Forever and Suede Bloom releases.

Written by

The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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