PONY

PONY (Product of New York) was founded in 1972 in New York by Roberto Muller as a small American athletic-footwear brand specifically focused on producing technically-engineered athletic shoes for the broader American athletic-and-streetwear community. The brand had a defining cultural moment through the late 1970s-1980s as one of the founding athletic-footwear brands of the broader hip-hop-and-streetwear cultural ecosystem (alongside Adidas, Puma, and the early Nike), with the iconic PONY Topstar high-top sneaker (a 1970s basketball-derived high-top product) becoming a defining cultural-icon of 1970s-1980s urban-American streetwear. The PONY vocabulary settled around several specific products: the iconic PONY Topstar high-top (the brand's defining 1970s-pattern basketball-derived product, still in production with the original 5-stripe-side-panel detail), the PONY Slamdunk high-top, the PONY Pro 80 athletic-derived sneaker, various deliberately-1970s-and-1980s-aesthetic athletic-and-streetwear-revival product, and a colour palette anchored to washed-white leather, washed-navy, oxblood, ecru, plus the brand's recurring use of saturated red, electric-blue, butter-yellow, and the iconic 1970s-1980s-American-athletic aesthetic accent combinations. The brand is owned by Iconix Brand Group plus the broader PONY parent operation. PONY operates approximately 50 retail flagship stores globally — anchored to the broader US, Japan, and Asian-market athletic-and-streetwear specialty retailer network. The brand has done extensive contemporary collaborations including PONY × ANTA, PONY × Stüssy, PONY × MADNESS, PONY × Sneeze Magazine, PONY × Bait, and various other 1970s-revival-aesthetic collaboration partners. The brand has been one of the defining post-1972 American-anchored 'classic-athletic-streetwear-revival' brands.