Our ongoing collaboration with PUMA has, from the onset, been about reshaping the collective memory of American Sportswear—isolating emblematic moments from the past and zeroing in on the characters and settings that made them indelible. As we began to conceive the next step of PUMA x Noah, we were drawn to the world of the late 20th-century American highschool and a particular type of athlete and off-duty style to be found there: the varsity wrestler sweating through practice then returning home to spend the night painting in the garage; the drummer who attends every home game, obsessed with sport; the committed academic who’s perennially found in the darkroom.
People, in other words, who redefine the narrow concept of “champion” by simply being themselves, finding meaning not through glory or external validation, but by pursuing their self-determined passions as ends in themselves, wherever they may lead. Their only real audience, when it comes down to it, is themselves.
With such characters in mind, there was no question who would be best to shoot the campaign. We had long admired Collier Schorr’s uncanny ability to create naturalistic photographs that capture these very qualities in her subjects, so when she accepted our invitation to collaborate, we were thrilled at the chance to work with her.
What we didn’t know at the time was that the sixteen-year-old wrestler immortalized in Schorr’s The Rivalry Between God and Other Gods – the image that inspired the collection’s focus around highschool wrestling – had a story that (almost too perfectly) epitomized the spirit of the campaign. It took only one phone call between Noah and that wrestler, Hudson Taylor, to see how beautifully these principles aligned.
A three-time all-american wrestler and theater major, Hudson spent his college years straddling two worlds—sport and art— each with two diametrically different approaches to inclusivity. During his final wrestling season, he began wearing a Human Rights Campaign sticker on his headgear as an emblem of LGBTQI+ advocacy. This personal fashion statement, a small but brave act of protest, opened him to controversy among teammates and opponents alike. It also shined a national spotlight on a longstanding prejudice hiding in the shadows of sport culture.
In 2011, nine years after Schorr’s lens caught him grappling with a teammate, Hudson founded Athlete Ally. Its mission then, as now, was simple: to end homophobia and transphobia in athletics, and to activate the athletic community to champion LGBTQI+ equality in sport and beyond. What began with modest campaigns aimed at education and personal responsibility has since evolved to authoring the very language of sport policy: among Athlete Ally’s victories are Principle 6, which successfully lobbied the IOC to amend the Olympic Charter to include language to specifically include non-discrimination based on sexual orientation; establishing the first ever ranking of LGBTQ+ inclusiveness of collegiate sport programs; and launching a global campaign calling on FIBA to overturn its ban on athletes in hijabs.
Hudson Taylor personifies the values that PUMA x Noah is built upon, and is the best definition of a true champion we can imagine. We feel lucky to have been introduced to his fascinating story and given the opportunity to share it with our audience – so much so that we’ve decided to contribute 10% of our first daysales to Athlete Ally to support their necessary mission.
We have also created a limited edition t-shirt, featuring Collier Schorr’s iconic image of Hudson, as a gift with purchase for the first in-store customers on launch day at Noah Flagship Stores and DSM London, Los Angeles, and Ginza.
