Aries' Sofia Prantera on Curiosity, Collaboration and Putting Her Mark on the PUMA Mostro

London-based streetwear brand and frequent sneaker scene collaborator are an enigma. The brainchild of Italian-born founder Sofia Prantera, the label rose from the ashes of her cult 90s brand Silas and helped to form the foundations of the luxury streetwear scene, although their approach have always been unapologetically DIY. Named after the fiery star sign and embodying the traits to match, Aries find their inspiration in subcultures, symbolism and streetwear’s early origins, with Prantera acting as the fierce driving force behind the brand.

Growing up on a diet of magazines like The Face and i-D, and having honed her skills at Central St Martins, Prantera’s intense curiosity made it clear that starting a brand was the perfect move for her. With an insatiable appetite for pinning down exactly how things work, Prantera wasn’t cut out to be a cog in a big machine, but it’s that very quality that makes her the perfect collaborator. One for ripping up the rule book (and often the silhouettes in question), Aries approach their work with other brands in a very unique way. Pair that with a creative-spirited brand like , and you know to expect the unexpected.

As part of our series, we caught up with Prantera to discuss the direction of the brand’s latest collaboration, where Aries have put their spin on two PUMA styles: the classic , and the mighty .

It’s great to connect, Sofia. Let’s start by hearing from you about your journey into fashion and how the Aries brand came to be.

It really started with my mother who introduced me to magazines like ID and The Face – magazines that made fashion seem exciting. I used to make a lot of clothes when I was young, so I moved to London when I was about 18 and started studying at Central St Martins, around the same time the rave scene was kicking off. I came here just before clubs became more dressy. I arrived on the cusp of that change, but I always really liked sportswear.

When I graduated, I started working at Slam City Skates. The job came through a friend who said that they needed someone to make clothes for them, and I'd graduated with a sportswear collection. I worked there for quite a long time and there is where started my first brand, which was called Holmes. Holmes belonged to Slam City Skates, but at that point, myself and one of the other employees realised that we wanted something of our own. We founded Silas, based on the Holmes character, who was called Silas Holmes. We took his first name and started our own company, and it became really successful in Japan. It was distributed by the same people who distributed Supreme – who made Supreme into what it is today. I then went on and had two kids, and the mid-noughties came around. At that time it seemed like the energy behind skateboarding stuff had died out. We decided to stop Silas and sold it in 2007.

And then there was Aries. What was the motivation behind its inception?

I quickly realised that I didn't like working for other people. I worked for a few brands – big brands at the time. This was interesting, but I needed to have more of a 360-degree approach to fashion and creation. And I realised that I actually wanted to work with these bigger brands in a more collaborative way, because then I could bring my talents to the table instead of having to be a cog in a machine. When you are part of a big brand, you have to fit into their way of doing things, which a lot of creative people might find very hard.

Collaborating is a lot more interesting because you are going in and playing a role, but the role is tailored to you. I can bring the same punk attitude and design approach that I have within Aries, as my own brand, without really distorting the other brand. I can create a moment for them.

Collaborations are a super-saturated space at the moment. How do you ensure Aries and the brands you work with cut through?

It's becoming a lot harder to find a point of difference. What Aries does with collaborations is that we make sure it's not just about the logo, and instead approach it by tapping into the other brand's DNA, and of course our own. There's space to build designs that bigger, more commercial entities may find much harder to do. I know in the past we've collaborated with certain brands who really just wanted to come in and have a look at our design processes and our methods because we work so differently from others.

What are those differences in your process?

We work more like a designer brand than a streetwear brand, even though the result can be equated to streetwear. That's good, but it can also hold you back in some ways. For example, I think when people look at an Aries collaboration it can sometimes feel less obvious. A lot of the time we are going in and creating new things, new styles. There is a design journey that comes with working with Aries, which is beneficial because we're very open to experimentation. We tend to have a lot of longstanding collaborations because we do bring this slightly riskier approach. It feels like the other brand is actually getting something more out of the colab.

What drew you to working with PUMA?

PUMA are quite an eclectic company. They sit really comfortably in a sports-fashion environment. They're much more prepared to take risks and to be novel in design. When we visited the HQ, we started with the Bridge Tour and the archive. I was struck by how much experimentation there was, and how much PUMA trod their own path. I think the archive presents such a beautiful resource and source of information. There's such a wealth of design in there, and so many fun and interesting approaches to things. It goes to show it's not just about being technical, it's also about having an eye for fashion and for that moment.

Of course, a lot of it goes into production as well. But in some ways, it was harder to hone in on what PUMA was, because when we collaborate we usually look at what makes up the other brand's DNA. They are much more eclectic. So that was what we decided to explore – being eclectic.

Your brand manifesto is well documented from your end – that being the foundation of the Aries brand: love, fashion, beautifully made quality clothing, streetwear, anti-fashion. How does that come through in this collection with PUMA?

I think some brands go into collaborations to appropriate someone else's manufacturing capabilities. Say you want to make really good velour suits – you're going to collaborate with a brand that can already do that. Aries do things in a slightly different way because we enjoy making things and we have a big studio where we can do just that.

For us, a lot of the time it's about coming in and reconstructing something. Instead of saying, 'Okay, here's the Mostro, let's make it in yellow,' we're like, 'How do we make this a more Aries version of what it is and how do we go about it?' A lot of the time it's about getting the shoes, breaking them, reconstructing them and remaking them out of something else. We do a lot of dyeing, and a lot of making things ourselves because that's what we enjoy as a design team. It might not always make the most commercial sense but it is the way we approach things.

The whole PUMA collaboration followed that format. Every single piece was prototyped by ourselves. PUMA have an amazing manufacturing base, so it was very easy to make what we wanted and make it to a really good level. But we like to be a little bit disruptive with what we are doing.

How did the concept for the collection come to life and how did it translate across to the footwear?

We started with this concept of 'Lost and Found'. This was about two years ago when the Mostro just started to resurface. I remember one of the girls working in the store had bought a pair, and it was bubbling up in the underground of London.

We went to the first meeting, where we had initially proposed to do the PUMA Suede. But I thought we could bring something more to the collaboration. I felt that the Mostro was an amazing design and such an iconic shoe. But again, we didn't feel that we should revisit it exactly as it was. So in our version, the upper looks much more like a walking shoe, which I think lends itself better to being genderless or appealing to a less fashion-forward consumer. We also wanted to make it out of suede, so it had a more old-fashioned feel. But ultimately what we were really interested in was the sole and the way the sole wraps around the shoe.

The Mostro was so iconic on Depop and that kind of secondary platform, so I thought we could build the collection about this idea of finding bits. We wanted the collection to feel really 'Lost and Found', like beautiful bits of vintage. But then when we put the collection together, I felt it didn't gel because the collection wasn't big enough to be seen that way, it didn't work as a small drop. So we changed some of the colours and we shrunk it in a way that felt like it had a stronger story.

So you went back to the drawing board?

We went back to some of the original graphics that we'd explored on the clothes, which were inspired by David Carson, the graphic designer who started Ray Gun magazine. And we went back to the noughties. I was there the first time, but it's quite funny because I think what's fashionable about that era – at the moment – is the stuff that we considered to be really difficult back then. Ray Gun, in particular, was something that I overlooked because the graphic style was associated with snowboarding, and at that time, snowboarding and skateboarding were going in completely different directions. Skateboarding was really punk and the graphics were really obnoxious whereas snowboarding had this sort of sensibility of softness. The graphics were a lot less hard-hitting. We went back and looked at a lot of that, both for the creative and for the graphic approach. We also looked at X-rays, which we used for the tracksuit and the campaign video. This gave the collection and campaign an analogue look. 

I think in 2003 or 2004, this would all have felt super technical but now it feels like pretty old technology. The introduction of computers and Photoshop meant that graphic design had become more accessible. David Carson wasn't using those. He was doing a lot of things by hand – photocopying things. We felt that that was a really interesting thing to look at instead of some of the more obvious noughties references we could have used.

We shrunk the collection and made it much tighter. By then, we'd gone to see the in New York and the Mostro had been launched. Mostro means ‘monster’ in Italian so our next idea was quite gothic. The PUMA show was also very gothic so we honed in on the dark theme.

The campaign’s film was also dark. It was inspired by an amazing photographer called Roger Ballen. It’s an ironic take on being yourself during a performance, finding your inner animal and letting yourself run free. There are a lot of animal references as well as our take on the iconic Linford Christie image. There's something within the context that feels really primordial.

The Mostro has come full circle. And the Suede, which is another icon for PUMA, is a classic. How did your design team work with that specific silhouette?

When we started the project the Suede was having quite a big moment. Collaborators like ERL were also looking at the noughties for inspiration but from a kiddy, cutesy point of view. I felt that we as a brand shouldn't go there because we hadn't before and it wasn't right for us to appropriate that moment. We did a lot of research on what we imagined to be a noughties snowboarder kid who would wear big shoes like the PUMA Suede.

We took some of those elements but pushed them towards something that felt more coherent with the theme – something a bit darker and not so cutesy, I guess. The Suede really lends itself to that fat lace, but we found that those laces made it harder to sit alongside the Mostro in such a tight collection. We wanted to push it to make it a bit more outerweary. We lost the platform, the toes are a little bit narrower, and there are no fat laces – it reminds you more of a walking shoe than a fat-laced skate shoe.

I remember when I was at Slam City Skates, everyone was skating the PUMA Suede and I felt that other brands had already reinterpreted that so well. The only skate thing that remained was the little skateboard under the bag and the finger skater that appears in the video. For me, it's really hard to appropriate skateboarding because even though I came from that background, I’m very aware that I'm not a skater anymore. I didn't feel like it was right for us and PUMA to do it. I think it was better to take the collaboration somewhere more unexpected. PUMA have been doing these collaborations and can have all the tools to do that themselves, so I don't think they needed us specifically to go into skateboarding.

Well, maybe not this time. But maybe there's a Suede XL or something else in the future that you can leave your mark on.

I think it's important to be coherent when you do something. And I think much as you would want to take lots of inspiration, it's really important to have one message. I feel that we really did that with this collection. Let's see what the future holds with the partnership!

The Aries x PUMA Mostro and Suede will drop at retailers on September 5. Hit the links below to get yours.