INSIDE TAG'S FOOTWEAR ARCHAEOLOGY

Walking into Inside Tag’s archive showroom is like opening a time capsule into ‘90s and ‘00s PUMA. Brimming with rarities, unusual styles and sought after archival collaborations, the London-based archivist has amassed an unparalleled collection of the German sportswear brand’s most cutting-edge designs. Borne from a collector’s mindset and a true passion for the product, George Roberts’ dedication to sourcing the unconventional items from PUMA’s past has led him to uncovering forgotten styles, tracing the brand’s design language and its undeniably progressive lineage.

From the PUMA Beisser’s sharp and angular sole unit to the brand’s 2002 collaboration with Jil Sander, the Spike Turf, George’s insight and knowledge for these distinctive and exceptionally designed shoes culminates in his obsession with the iconic silhouette of the ‘00s: the PUMA Mostro. A firm favourite of his, and one that has graced his archive many times, the Mostro has become an emblem of his fervour for PUMA product from this era. With this in mind, it’s only right that now, George has his own PUMA Mostro UR collaboration on its way.

Ahead of the launch of Inside Tag and PUMA's collaborative Mostro UR ‘Communication Pack’, END. visited George’s archive and showroom to pore through his expansive archive and shine a light on what inspires him about PUMA footwear from this era.

Can you introduce yourself and tell us a little about Inside Tag?

I'm George Roberts. I’ve spent most of my life in Sutton until I was working in Kingston, at Natterjacks. I’ve been selling clothes for about 12 years now. I’ve had numerous platforms, but Inside Tag is the one that stuck and the one I'm most proud of. In previous years of selling things, I would always sell items to then fund buying the products I actually cared about, but the ethos of Inside Tag was to shine a light on and to sell stuff that I really cared about, so it's always items that I'm passionate about. The way that I've sculpted the ethos of Inside Tag is to always look further beyond the item, to dig deeper and look outside just branding, to look at the way that things are designed. It doesn't have to be the hottest brand, it doesn't have to be the coolest thing on the streets at the moment or what your friends are wearing but just well-designed items, things that were crafted to stand the test of time and just be cool forever.

Was there a transition moment where you realised that you were actually an archivist?

In the early years of Inside Tag, I sold a lot of things that I probably would have kept now but that then wouldn't have generated the lane to be able to keep those items. I actually hate selling things, it annoys me. I really wish I could keep everything. I'm getting better at not becoming a hoarder, but I still like to keep everything.

I think archiving is somewhat glamorised now. I mean, essentially if you're into fashion, you're an archivist. I'll guarantee you that if you go into your cupboards, you've got pieces there that are deemed an archive item. I wear all my archive. I know that's bad to say and there's obviously some museum pieces, but I want to wear all my stuff and it's very much tailored to my taste, so if I can have it in the showroom and wear it, then I'm going to wear it over keeping it in the archive.

You’ve got an expansive PUMA collection of classic sneakers, forgotten styles and sought-after rarities – what was it that first drew you to Puma footwear?

The funny thing is I've got a screenshot from 2019 of a PUMA Beisser and when I look at it I get angry at myself that I wasn't buying PUMA since then but everything comes back round. I'm annoyed that I didn't study it more back then, because I was still into obscure sneakers, but I didn't give PUMA the time. I didn't dedicate time to looking back at PUMA until 2021/2022, so when I started to, I started to unearth some of the best shoe design I've ever seen. It's the most fun period. I've done it with brands before and my favourite place to be is in the trenches of the internet digging up these items. It feels like you're doing something for a bigger cause, you feel like you're unearthing something. A “footwear archaeologist” to put it in a weird context. [laughs]

What was the light bulb moment where you then pivoted to looking at PUMA more intently? Was it a specific shoe or style that you saw?

There are obviously a lot of crazier designs but it's the Mostro. I got my first pair of Mostro sneakers walking past my local charity shop. They ended up sitting in my mum's house for a while and I decided it was time to sell them. It was just this white, beaten pair. They had holes in them and I put them on Inside Tag and they sold instantly – so that spurred me on to just go in.

Two weeks down the line, I found a camouflage pair at the car boot. I bought them from this woman for maybe 10 or 15 pounds, I can't remember, but that’s quite a lot for the car boot sale. I just wanted to build up the biggest collection of Mostro sneakers I could, because I knew that it was time for them. I think things go in circles and like you said, what kind of ignited that or made that period so valid was everything around me, my customer base and the general hunger for something like the Mostro, with it's forward thinking design. It was just the perfect period, where I could showcase these sorts of designs. I am of that age where I remember the Mostro coming out and I can link it to certain people and now I link it to completely different people. I see this as a very progressive shoe for younger and older people.

I would love to sit here and lie and say “I was 10 years old wearing them and they were my favourite shoe” but it was the design of the Mostro that really had the whole the whole of British culture in a chokehold. I think it was even big in the US. They were everywhere and they were cool then and I think they're even cooler now.

In the ‘00s, PUMA’s footwear was often very experimental and forward thinking in execution, with a sculptural design language that was progressive yet wearable, but largely unseen. Collecting all of these pairs together, you’re providing an opportunity to share these styles again. Does preservation drive your approach to archiving PUMA product?

When you talk about preserving footwear now, it's done digitally. I take pictures of everything that goes on the website, but my archive hasn’t been documented like that. I don't look at it digitally. I’d rather someone come to the showroom where they can pick up and feel the shoe, in hand. I love to preserve things, so it’s nice to be able to look these items in real life, and it's nice to have a range of things from different years so you can see the pattern of how they worked and how they got over problems. Sometimes the mesh was quite wide, so during rainy seasons that was a problem so then they switched to the leather perforations, still giving you that breathability but then counteracting weather. You can see these changes that have been made to adapt the shoe seasonally or adapt to the consumer and I think that's necessary to preserve because it's a story there. It shows growth in the business and growth in designers. I want to see everything in person and that's why archiving and having something physical means so much to me. I spot so many things when I pick up an item. Looking into it and looking into the item, being able to identify what year it is from, to identify the fabrications. I always want to know more.

Why do you think that PUMA footwear from that era has such an enduring legacy?

It's a testament to the designers that worked on the products. You have a lot of the designers looking at Japanese culture and filtering some of these references into their design language and then making them new. Their referencing in the old footwear was next to none, you don't really see that anymore. Even to this day, there's not much on the market like it. It stands on its own feet, excuse the pun, but it's unparalleled. It would be so expensive to produce now but even to hire a designer with that capability would be so expensive. I mean if I could design something like that I would charge a million pounds because they are that amazing but I also think that in this day and age there's too much analytics on what works. Back in the 2000s, there wasn't that overarching management on designers to drive targets because this shoe did that in that year. There was free reign and they were allowed to open up their mind and design what they wanted as opposed to designing something to do well commercially. I understand business and their business is to sell product, but it seemed to have more of an attitude of “I want to impress my consumer” instead of “I want to sell to the consumer”.

You’ve sourced many pairs of rare and little seen PUMA sneakers over the years – what is your holy grail sneaker from the brand that you’ve yet to get your hands on?

I've not got a Sono in my size, which is the suede slip-on shoe that's referencing a Japanese garden tool, with these overlaid panels that make up the shoe. It’s an amazing shoe. It's got this wooden patterned outsole and it just it feels really different to a lot of the stuff that PUMA made but so similar in a way. I've not got a pair of my size and I feel like I would wear that nicely with outfits, so I just want to be able to have that there so I can try some things on and walk out the door in it.

The Mostro was a polarising sneaker in its day and continues to drive conversation with its contemporary re-release. Why do you think the Mostro has been such an impactful sneaker silhouette?

It was an affordable shoe. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sat at about 35 to 40 pounds, so it was accessible for mostly everyone. To have something that's cool and in its own realm for that price point, that's why it went so crazy. They didn't exclude anyone. There were multiple colorways as well, so there were so many different versions on the market and I think it was just an amazingly designed shoe for the time. I think back to that era, and I think of people wearing three quarter lengths with the Mostro and it looks so good.

It had so much cultural pull for many different people. It went down well with the football crowd; it went down well with people that were into music. There's a lot of angles that it took and it cultivated excitement in a lot of people without excluding them.

How did your collaboration with PUMA on the Mostro UR come about originally?

I think I was always going to work on the Mostro. Everyone always thinks I've worked with PUMA for ages, but I just really appreciate this product and I'd done all of this without contract. I just did it because I really believed in the Mostro. I really wanted to showcase it. I think it was the perfect step for me. After I had curated all the pairs on my site, I reached out to PUMA through my friend Matthias Borg and I was badgering him about what was going on with Mostro and until you're in, there’s a smokescreen. Things are happening backstage but why would they tell you what's going on because you're not part of it. I just kept on badgering them [laughs], scratching on the door and asking what's going on.

I kept at them, and I curated the pairs that I’d sourced and did the no budget shoot in the corner of my office with all the pairs and my friend holding her head, with the idea that she's so stressed out because she couldn't choose what Mostro to wear because she had so many. She's wearing no shoes, and she's got a hand on her head, and we dubbed it “can't shoes”. I hadn't done anything creative in a while, so it was quite nice to get the response I did off that. It got me the biggest job of my career so far as I got an email from PUMA the next day saying “hey, let's have a call” and the relationship just built from there. I entered it pretty true to myself and really owned what Inside Tag was, and I think they really felt that authenticity and my love for the Mostro. On the back of that, they asked me to join them to validate the Mostro in Herzogenaurach after the Christmas break. I didn't really know much about it, but didn't ask any questions. I went there to see the first ever sample of the Inside Tag Mostro, but ended up doing this archive talk where I validated the Mostro. I was stood in this pretty big room, with the employees laying out chairs and I asked “do you reckon this room will be full!?” I looked up to the top of the room and just thought “that's a lot of people I'm going to be speaking in front of”.  About 10 minutes before I got on stage there was rumoured to be about 2,000 people in the room, which was just gut-wrenching but I was hyping myself up. I got on the stage and tried to own it and to be authentic but held myself through it and validated the Mostro there. You’re talking to people at PUMA that are doing analytics or they're doing marketing so they wouldn't even necessarily know what this is, because this whole new phase of introing products through a vintage page is new. It's not really been capitalised on before - it's a new way of doing things. So, pats on the back to PUMA for strategically doing that.

Centred around bright and unconventional colour combinations, what has inspired your “Communication Pack” Mostro UR sneaker?

When I sat down to design initially, I was thinking that we’ve got to make something that sells. I wanted to make a clean, easy colour, which is why I opted for the white. I think it's easy to wear but with the purple and brown you’ve got to really like that shoe, you know, and I think that with the Mostro in general, it really opens up the imagination of anyone that's into shoes to say I do like that. It's either you do like it, or you don't, it's not a middle of the road silhouette, and that's why I love the Mostro, that's why I've attached myself to it because it lets people make their mind up if they like something. It's not easy consumerism. I've always wanted to be separate from that. I don't want to wear something that someone else is wearing, I want to be original, and I want to be pushing boundaries. I want to be walking down the street and see people turn their neck like “what the hell?”

Sitting down and doing the colorways, I had to come up with a name, which ended up coming quite naturally - the "Communication Pack". We originally made it as a joke because the white style is obviously referenced from the W810i, the Sony Ericsson Walkman phone, which I had when I was younger. It’s one of my favourite colour combinations. The Walkman colourway is referenced from the phone and the brown and purple colorway is just referenced from colours that I wear more generally. I wear a lot of fishing jackets. I love brown and I have this purple hat that I actually got from Pastdown; it's an old Tommy Hilfiger hat but the fit on it is just so good. It's completely beat, and I took the Tommy Hilfiger logo off, and I just wear it like as a purple cap but it's referenced from that fit. It's the communication pack, so you have one colourway that is your phone, and the other colourway is trail hiking inspired, where you leave your phone at home, and you go out into the outdoors, spending time connecting with friends and family in a more direct way. Communicating in a different manner. We’re all on our phones all the time, and of course I’m guilty of it as well, but it’s an ode to getting our screentime down and getting out into the world and enjoying it together.