For decades, PUMA’s Formstrip has been at home on the terraces of Europe.
Terraces : British : noun. : TERR-iss : A section of a stadium with wide steps where fans stand to watch football matches.
During the late ‘70s, traveling football supporters returned home to the UK with a different sort of trophy; trainers.
They returned home on days-long train rides, wearing gum-soled models originally intended for handball, tennis, and indoor football, picked up on away days in France, Germany, and Italy. Colorful low-tops with dark, straight-leg denim or newly trendy cords became a match-going uniform in Northwestern cities like Liverpool and Manchester, worn in place of team colors. Donning your club’s kit became patently uncool, something one’s dad did, and instead, the term “clobber” was popularized to describe the style. At first, there wasn’t a name that stuck to this emerging subculture. Certainly not a mod, or a punk, or a Scally. Eventually, “The Look” as it was first called around Merseyside, spread through the rest of the UK.
Terrace was more than just a look; it was a new era of football fans. And its followers, deemed 'Casuals,' established the true beginning of trainer culture in the UK. What began as a borrowed trend found in the stadiums, inadvertently became a fashion statement—a movement that emerged from European football with its own codes, attitudes, music, hairstyles, and its own shoes. It was about where you were from, as much as who you were with, and what trainers were on your feet.
