Everyone Cool in Seoul Is Already Calling These New Sneakers the Next Speedcats

Last week, I flew the world over—with reference to 7000 miles—from New York City to Seoul, South Korea, for one goal and one goal handiest. I went to peer the shoes that insiders are already calling the following Speedcats aka the viral low-profile shoes that Puma rereleased on the finish of 2024. Spotted on Emily Ratajkowski, Gracie Abrams, Dua Lipa, Jennifer Lawrence, and extra, the Speedcats had been at the tip of each and every sneaker lover’s tongue (and of their closets) ever since they debuted. Now, any other taste from Puma’s archive is ready to usurp the motorsport-inspired silhouette, and I, for one, used to be demise to get the 411 sooner than any person else.

Sleep-deprived and somewhat numb, I arrived in Seoul following a 20-hour trip day in a position to peer what all of the hype surrounding the new-and-improved H-Street shoes used to be about.

First issues first, somewhat of background: The H-Street dates again to the early 2000s, when Puma reinvented its 1990s-era Harambee track-and-field efficiency footwear for the streets. “That’s where the name comes from—H-Street like the Harambee H,” Gregor Abenstein, the top of Puma Select, tells me on the H-Street activation in Seoul’s Seongdong-gu district, the community steadily known as the Brooklyn of Seoul. According to Abenstein, 2025’s model of the H-Street, which might be launched in 3 colorways on June 28, is largely a one-to-one design from the unique with modernized sneakers era. (By that, I imply it is light-weight in a barely-there form of method.) “We feel that, from an aesthetic point of view, [the H-Street] is as relevant as it was back then today,” he says.