Creative Collaborator and Ambassador, to be exact.
After proven sales results from its partnerships with Rihanna and Kylie Jenner, Puma is going full steam ahead with its celebrity-driven marketing strategy.
Just one day after Rihanna revealed her latest Puma collection in Paris and nine days after unveiling its latest campaign with supermodel-turned-movie star Cara Delevingne, the German activewear brand has announced its latest cool, famous recruit: Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a. The Weeknd. His official title: Creative Collaborator and Ambassador.
As such, Tesfaye will star in the upcoming “Sportstyle” campaign, called “Run The Streets,” shot by Mark Seliger in L.A. and Toronto, where the 26-year-old singer grew up. More intriguingly, he’s also designing a collection of footwear and apparel set to drop sometime in 2017. Per a release, it will be “a fusion of Puma’s sport-inspired designs and The Weeknd’s street-motivated aesthetics as seen in his label, XO.” This obviously begs the question: Could he be joining his friends Rihanna and Kanye West on the Fashion Month calendar?
The choice feels at once surprising — he’s not particularly well-known for his fashion choices — and inevitable: He’s young, famous, talented and dates a Hadid. He also dipped his toes into clothing design last fall with that Alexander Wang collaboration.
With a new haircut, a new single and video (in which he wears Pumas, omg!) and an album due out in November (the same month as the Puma campaign, what a coincidence), it’s definitely an exciting time to be The Weeknd. Although… we haven’t seen any recent evidence of he and Bella Hadid spending time together. They’re both very busy these days, of course, with Hadid having just basically walked every major show in Milan, but if they could just post a cute Instagram or something in the near future that would be great.
