Fitsole x Puma Launch New Campaign Reviving the Classic Palermo

Puma is bringing back the iconic Palermo shoe, originally a staple of ‘80s street style, with a fresh twist for 2024. To showcase the revival, Fitsole Egypt - one of the country’s leading sneaker and apparel shops and Puma’s newest official distributor - enlisted the talents of young Egyptian style pioneers the Risky Boys and model Malak Khalifa for a campaign that merges vintage aesthetics with modern energy. 

This new Fitsole campaign coincides with the grand opening of the new Puma by Fitsole store at Arkan Plaza, Sheikh Zayed, which took place on December 20th, offering a fitting backdrop to this iconic shoe revival.

Captured by Egyptian filmmaker Marwan Imam, the shoot takes cues from the ‘80s, using 35mm Kodak colour plus film to create a nostalgic ambiance. "The juxtaposition of young style pioneers like the Risky Boys, who scream the new generation of youth fashion in Egypt, with old-school style film photography and the shoe itself was the core here,” Imam tells SceneStyled.

Showcasing Puma’s Palermo shoes as versatile essentials for daily life, Fitsole’s campaign bridges the gap between Egyptian streetwear fashion and lifestyle settings. What began as a studio shoot quickly evolved into a street-style campaign to better reflect the vintage shoe’s origins. 

“This is a street shoe, we’re doing street style, so we went out and shot in the streets,” Imam shares. The locations included a supermarket and the metro, which Fitsole chose for their natural catwalk-like architecture, complementing the Risky Boys’ concept of the catwalk. Malak Khalifa proved the perfect fit for the campaign, who Imam notes “encapsulates Puma’s streetwear fashion energy.”

Shooting video with Super8 film posed its own set of challenges, as Imam embraced the unpredictability of using old-school equipment. “You can’t see what you shoot or even if it’s properly exposed. Even the focus is kind of a gamble,” he tells SceneStyled. Despite these obstacles, the use of film photos and videos added an element of thrill and chaos to the shoot, something Imam felt was essential. “I shot Super8 vertically so it would fit on Instagram and TikTok,” he adds, bringing the retro medium into the contemporary digital age.