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Hands up if you’ve ever cross-tied the laces of your takkies? Or coloured in your toecaps with a permanent marker? Then you’re clearly someone who feels the need to play, to individualise your footwear. Well, Puma’s already one step ahead of your game. Its new “Mongolian Barbeque” concept lets foot fetishists customise their own super-clogs from the instep all the way through to the sole. An in-store computer console with a touch screen, a flat-bed scanner and a buffet of bits and pieces of lace, leather, rubber and micro-fibre – all disguised as an Asian food stall from a sci-fi movie – will let you assemble your own sneaker from start to finish. In the end, you’ll be left with a shoe that is unlike any other on the planet. Forget famous Dutch designer Marcel Wanders, and his new line for Puma, ’cos this baby has been custom-designed by none other than the ultimate maestro – yourself. And to prove that they still retain their own design consciousness, Puma will throw in a branded fortune cookie and some chopsticks to appease you while you have to wait the four to six weeks for your real deal to arrive from a dedicated factory in China.
