Along with a good shoe, Salehe Bembury has always loved a good story. The legendary footwear designer, whose storied career in fashion has included collaborations with Crocs, Moncler, and New Balance, grew up obsessed with basketball sneakers, thanks to a childhood spent both watching and playing the game. “The storytelling and intention behind those products added another layer of magic to the experience for me,” says Bembury. “Sneakers felt bigger than footwear; they represented identity, aspiration, performance, and culture all at once.” 

Years later, Bembury is still keeping identity and culture at the forefront of his mind. Ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Bembury has joined forces with Puma to create a collection of travel wear and goalkeeper kits for Puma’s 11 national federations playing in this summer’s games. The collection, which includes both footwear and apparel, goes beyond mere functionality, instead tapping into the cultural depth associated with the game. “The goal was never just to design sportswear,” says Bembury. “It was to contribute to a much larger visual and emotional language that already means so much to people globally.” 

Ahead of the collection’s launch, we spoke with the designer about his own relationship to football, the inspirations behind the collection, and more.

Congrats on the new collaboration with Puma! What was the original creative vision behind the collection? 

Salehe Bembury: I really approached this collaboration as an opportunity to immerse myself in research first and foremost. I spent months researching what had been executed well in the past, where there were opportunities for evolution, and how different teams and nations had visually expressed their identities over time. One thing I became very aware of throughout that process was the delicate balance between heritage and progression. In sports, especially football, the answer is rarely to start from scratch. The existing history, iconography, and emotional connection people have to a team are too important. For me, the goal became understanding that context deeply enough to evolve it respectfully rather than replace it. 

Once I established that foundation through football research, I began diving into another major influence for me: 90s visual culture. Being a 90s kid, I’ve always been drawn to that era’s sense of individuality, contrast, and freedom in graphic execution. Brands, teams, and cultural  movements all had distinct personalities then. Nothing felt overly standardised or flattened. Every logo, motif, and visual language felt unique to its own world. I wanted to bring some of that energy back into this project. In many ways, the collection became an attempt at respectfully disrupting  the visual language of football. 

What was your own relationship with football like growing up? 

Salehe Bembury: Growing up, my parents always made sure I was involved in sports. While basketball was definitely my primary interest, I also spent time playing baseball and soccer, which gave me an appreciation not only for the games themselves, but for the culture and identity that surrounded them. Jerseys, team colours, logos, and the emotional connection people had to their teams all became really interesting to me from an early age. 

Even though I did not continue playing soccer into my later years, the sport remained  impossible to ignore because of its global impact. Through travelling and experiencing different cultures firsthand, I saw how deeply football is woven into everyday life around the world. Few sports have the ability to create the kind of collective energy and national pride that football  does. Whether it was seeing cities transformed during major tournaments or watching how fans expressed themselves through style and community, it became clear to me that football exists far beyond the pitch. 

How has football and sports culture influenced both your personal style and your work as a designer? 

I think the biggest influence for me has been witnessing the extreme sense of community that exists within football culture. Across all of the work that I do, I am ultimately trying to tell a story and cultivate a community around that story. Football operates on a level where the emotional connection runs incredibly deep. In some cases, people are willing to dedicate their entire identities to their teams and what they represent. While I cannot say I agree with every extreme that comes with that level of passion, I do deeply understand the importance of  believing in something bigger than yourself.

That level of emotional investment is extremely inspiring as a designer because at the end of  the day, design is meant to evoke emotion. Seeing sports culture, fashion, design, history, and identity all merge together to create this massive shared experience is a very special thing to witness. Football is one of the few spaces where design can immediately become part of a larger cultural memory. A jersey, a colour, or a graphic can instantly trigger pride, nostalgia, unity, or even heartbreak. That emotional power is something I found incredibly inspiring  throughout this process. 

Informed by each country’s geography, nature, and architecture, the 11 kits in this collection take inspiration from teams’ heritage. How did you approach translating each country’s identity into something wearable? 

The number one priority throughout this entire process was authenticity. While it was important for me to filter these collections and travel wear kits  through my own design lens, I found it even more important to honour the identity of each team through colour palette, pattern execution, symbolism, and the overall emotional essence tied to each nation. What made the process especially challenging was understanding that these identities already carry decades of meaning and emotional attachment. You are not creating in a vacuum. People already have deep relationships with these teams, these colours, and these visual systems. Because of that, I approached the work less as reinvention and more as evolution. The goal was never to erase what existed before, but instead to contribute a new perspective that could exist alongside that history in a respectful way. 

With the collection being rooted in travelwear, how did you approach creating pieces that function beyond the field? 

I think this is where my industrial design background got to shine the most, because I have  always considered myself a function-first designer. Every design decision should ideally solve a problem or improve an experience in some way, and this collection was no different. The foundation of the collection was built around the idea of travelling light, and that concept  became a lens through which we approached every garment and every detail. We asked ourselves very practical questions: How does someone travel? Why do they travel? What makes  travelling easier? What makes it more comfortable? And at the same time, why can’t functionality and style coexist at the highest level? From there, we became very intentional about organisation, layering, versatility, fabric choices,  pocket placement, comfort, and ease of movement. The goal was to create pieces that could  seamlessly move between environments while still feeling elevated and expressive. 

What inspired the design of the collaboration’s shoe, the Velum 1 Akita?

During my research process, I came across interviews with a number of former football players, and something I found really interesting was hearing them describe the transition from travel to pitch. A lot of them spoke about the psychological shift that happens, the physical shift that happens, and even the change that occurs through what they wear. There was this repeated idea of transformation, of mentally entering a different state once it was time to perform. 

That story became a major source of inspiration for me. I thought it would be interesting to create a shoe that visually represented that transition between work and play, between arrival and performance. The Akita was designed around that idea. At first glance, the upper and tooling exist in a toned  down nude palette that feels calm, grounded, and understated. However, the lateral formstrip tells a different story. While it initially blends into the rest of the shoe, once exposed to sunlight  it transforms into an iridescent expression of colour. That shift was meant to symbolise the transition the players described to me through those interviews. 

With football being a major influence on both culture and fashion, what excited you the most  about designing for one of the sporting world’s biggest global events? 

Besides the Olympics, this is arguably one of the biggest global events that exists, so to not only participate in it, but to have my work represented on the world stage and ultimately appear on the pitch, is both a career milestone and an incredible honour. In a way, it felt like I was temporarily stepping into the spirit of 11 different communities and  learning how to respectfully speak their visual language through design. That level of responsibility was both exciting and humbling. At the end of the day, very few projects allow you to contribute to something that already means so much to so many people around the world.

The PUMA x SALEHE BEMBURY collection is available to shop now at PUMA.com, PUMA stores, and select retailers worldwide.