PUMA and Jil Sander Reissue a Speedcat From Their Own Archive, and Never Say Which Year

PUMA and Jil Sander put the Speedcat back on shelves this week in white and black leather, the footwear half of an autumn-winter chapter that also carries a Suede and a T7 tracksuit. PUMA’s release describes the shoe as a reissue of the original Jil Sander and PUMA archive design, finished with a leather heel detail from creative director Simone Bellotti and a full leather lining. What the release never does is say which year that archive design is from, and for a partnership this old the omission is the interesting part.

The Speedcat came out of motorsport. It is a racing flat, built low and narrow with a thin sole so a driver can feel a pedal through it, and the shape has barely moved in a quarter century. The Jil Sander connection runs alongside it and predates most of what people now call a luxury sneaker. In 1998 the label partnered with PUMA to rework its football lace-ups in fine leather, at a point when sportswear and fashion had not yet agreed that they belonged in the same sentence. That collaboration ran across several collections and set a template the rest of the industry spent the next twenty years copying. The two reconnected in October 2025 under Bellotti with a leather King Avanti, followed by the K-Street in April 2026, which this site has been tracking against PUMA’s wider Speedcat push. This is the third instalment, and the first to reach into the shared archive rather than restyle something current.

The white pair is the one worth looking at closely. It is smooth white leather with a cream suede Formstrip, a small brass cat stamped into the heel, and an outsole in deep navy blue that PUMA’s own announcement does not mention anywhere. The forefoot pad under that navy is cream, so the sole reads as two tones from the side and as a single block from underneath. The black pair is black leather throughout, perforated across the quarter panel, with a gold foil co-brand at the forefoot and a tonal Formstrip that you only find by moving the shoe in the light. Both ship in a cream box with JIL SANDER debossed into the lid and a white drawstring bag, which is the kind of packaging decision that tells you which half of the partnership was running the room.

The Speedcat is the most copied silhouette in the business right now, and PUMA has spent two years running it through collaborators at a pace that would exhaust most models. Rosé has had multiple pairs, the Wedge spun off into its own program, and Daniëlle Cathari, Noir Kei Ninomiya and a run of in-house makeups have all taken a turn. Almost all of that work is additive. It puts a new material or a new texture on a shoe that is currently selling. Jil Sander did the opposite and went backward, to something the two companies made together before the category existed, and dressed it in the plainest possible leather. In a field where every brand is trying to out-decorate the last collaboration, reissuing a quiet shoe is the move that actually stands out, and it is the only one in the Speedcat’s recent run that could not be executed by anybody else.

The rest of the chapter supports that reading. The Suede gets the same leather treatment, and the T7 tracksuit, which PUMA introduced in 1968 and named for the seven-centimetre Formstrip down its leg, has been recut in a bi-stretch wool made for Jil Sander. Bellotti shot the whole thing in a field left to grow wild, with Meadow Walker and Barry Lawson dressed as though they had walked out of a city and kept going. Nothing in the campaign is trying to look fast, which for a motorsport shoe and a tracksuit is a deliberate choice.

Retail is $430, which sits a long way above the standard leather Speedcat and in line with where Jil Sander prices its own footwear rather than where PUMA prices anything. That number is doing specific work. It separates this pair from the collaborative Speedcats that have been arriving at a fraction of it, and it signals that the shoe is being sold through Jil Sander’s channel first and PUMA’s second. Whether the market agrees is a different question, because the Speedcat’s strength has always been that it was the cheap, correct, slightly obscure option. Pricing it as a luxury good tests how much of its appeal was the shape and how much was the access.

The PUMA x Jil Sander Speedcat released globally on October 23, 2026 through Jil Sander and PUMA stores and online, with select stockists following on October 24. The white colorway is article 410057 and the black is 410060, both at $430, available now at PUMA in white and PUMA in black. The campaign, shot by Guen Fiore, is fronted by Meadow Walker and Barry Lawson. For where the silhouette has been going without the fashion houses attached, the Speedcat Wedge is the other direction PUMA has been taking it.

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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