PUMA Oslo-City

• MODEL: PUMA OSLO-CITY
• MADE IN: WEST GERMANY
• ART.NO: 165

The vintage PUMA Oslo-City surfaces again, this time in a clean and clear, black on white colorway showing off a precisely cut upper atop a beautifully solid sole unit.

While the PUMA Oslo may be known to most (especially considered that there were a variety of re-releases in 2013 including a blue on white and a green on white version) the Oslo-City variation of the model may be a different story. We’ve previously featured another, darker pair of City-Oslo’s, and the ones pictured here have more in difference to those than just their colorway.

First of all, the sole unit is completely different. Not a ‘PUMA Contact’ sole (or at least not branded as such) and featuring some wild red-tinted pivot points that ripple out textured lines of traction across the rest of the out sole.

Shape-wise the toes and uppers are basically identical (even down to the stitching pattern) but from the profile view you can clearly see how much more rounded the heel is on this pair.

On small detailing, the foam tongue of this pair versus the leather, tag-branded tongue of the other, above-mentioned pair, is a typical history story when it comes to many, many PUMA shoes, so nothing new there. But the lack of the (most likely Olympics) ring logo on the outer side wall shows that there was definitely a non-specialized release of the Oslo-City.

How weird is this though: despite their myriad of differences, both shoes are recorded as having the same vintage article number of 165. We can’t say for sure what happened, but it’s important to remember that back in the day many shoes were produced under identical names in different regions and thus brands like PUMA ended up producing strangely differing versions of the same shoe during the same time. Which would explain a lot back then.

However, with these, the ghost story goes on, because (at least to our knowledge) both these and the darker pair that share the same article number were also both produced in West Germany. Maybe some mysteries are meant to remain unsolved forever.

written by Dylan Cromwell

photography by errol