PUMA Avenue Hi

• MODEL: PUMA AVENUE HI
• TYPE: BASKETBALL
• MADE IN: ITALY
• ART.NO: 4250/2

The PUMA Avenue is actually a bit like the Pressing silhouette, in that it’s a lightweight, thinly-built, vintage basketball high-top model from the ’80s or ’90s. The soles are solid with a great, semi-futuristic design reminiscent of what a 20th century designer might’ve imagined for the 21st century industrialization (think child-friendly H.R. Giger pattern structures), and the colorway and layered leather design is wicked – clean and quite eye-catching – however the uppers are once again paper thin, feeling more like an expensive and not-so-sturdy court shoe.

Maybe it’s designed this way for greater leaps or faster dribbles, though even if one were to set aside the severe lack of support in the heel and ankle area the problem of the innards and tongue still arise. Just like the Pressing, this Avenue – which I might add is in immaculate condition, completely unused and well stored over the years – has a sort of thick and itchy inner lining that feels as though it’s ready to flake off against ones shin the moment a drop of sweat or condensation connects between the two.

Along the same lines the back of the super thin, floppy tongue is padded with a foam material laid underneath an ultra delicate mesh lining. Without even a moment of wear the left shoe of this pair has managed to begin eating itself from the inside, and the foam is resigned to a sticky, crumbly mess that puffs through in clouds and adheres itself to your skin, sock, or pants, whichever it might meet first.

Despite these short comings – which are far more concerning twenty years later than they would’ve been with the shoe fresh off the truck – the Avenue is a kick ass summer silhouette and definitely a grab for any vintage heads that don’t find an inner affinity with the thick, more amply padded, and much heavier basketball models that I personally live and breath by.

written by Dylan Cromwell

photography by errol