Flying shoes: the striking effect with Puma
- Apr 15
- 2 min read
Flavie Larue, Art Director & Space Designer at tiny studio, April 2026, Dubai, UAE, Trend monitoring
I was strolling through the Dubai Mall when my creative mind literally froze. In the windows of the Puma store, some shoes were floating.
Not on a display stand. Not hanging from a wire.
Levitating, as if gravity had decided to take a day off. Two seconds of complete stillness. And that's precisely where it gets interesting.
When an everyday object defies its own rules
We all know a shoe. We wear them every day. The brain automatically categorizes it, effortlessly, without questioning it. But a floating shoe? The brain is baffled. It searches. It gets closer. It wants to understand what it sees.
That's precisely the essence of point-of-sale design: to create just enough doubt to draw the customer to the product. Not because he was told it was beautiful or innovative, but because he doesn't yet understand what he's looking at.
The shoe itself hasn't changed. It's the way you draw the eye that makes all the difference.
Technology at the service of magic
In reality, it's a true design challenge. Creating a convincing illusion requires surgical precision: the angle of the light, the suspension height, the treatment of the floor. Nothing is left to chance.
Is it a magnet integrated into the sole? A nearly invisible monofilament thread? A cleverly concealed rigid internal structure? I don't know yet. And honestly, I like this uncertainty.
Because it's precisely in this tension between "I want to understand" and "I want to preserve the magic" that the design becomes strategic.
And then what?
I'm now trying to dissect the technical system that underpins this type of presentation. If you have worked on similar installations, or if you know of suppliers specializing in this type of levitation device, I would really like to understand how you create this illusion from the inside.
According to some, the shoe levitates based on magnets used in the display device, for others it's the team of Levitas who catch us again : https://levita-magic.com/fr/projects
I write an artical about them :