ATHLEISURE BASH: Adidas Originals Upgrades Its SoHo Lodgings

The New Adidas Originals store in SoHo. Photo courtesy of Adidas

A few flashes of lightning in the sky weren't enough to keep VIP sneaker heads away from the opening party at the new Adidas Originals store last night. This sub brand of the athletic wear giant made waves several years ago when it debuted its previous store on Wooster Street with an open air storefront and an abundance of those nostalgic sneaker styles we all remember from our collective youth. The brand —the one with the original Adidas trefoil insignia— has evolved quite a bit since then, and while still able to wield enough promotional power to launch a full-scale revival of its classic Stan Smith tennis shoe a couple of years ago, it has grown to encompass more modern cutting edge design as well as exclusive collaborations with influential stores, designers and, yes, pop stars. Having outgrown its SoHo showplace, Adidas has finally opened a new one on Spring Street with much more room to show off its latest revivals –the "Gazelle" is the vintage model du jour now— as well as hot collaborations and vastly enlarged wall of shoes (pictured above) to peruse.

Guests at the opening party for the new Adidas Originals store. Photo courtesy of Adidas

It's a lot more store for Adidas lovers to shop, and that's saying something significant these days when every retailer is seriously reviewing the returns on its square footage. Standouts from last night's opening included graphic womenswear from Rita Ora's ongoing collaboration with the label as well as our personal fave, the White Mountaineering x Adidas collection (pictured below), a team up with the influential Japanese men's label.
Last night's party centered around a short film made in collaboration with rapper Joey Bada$$, and Adidas hung on to its old store just enough to usher guests there for a private concert but the hip hop performer and his crew before it gets turned over to a new tenant —kind of like throwing one last blowout party in your old apartment before you move out.
Hopefully Adidas will get their deposit back.
Well, maybe they don't care.

 Adidas Originals now open at 115 Spring Street between Mercer & Greene Streets, SoHo

The White Mountaineering x Adidas collection at the new Adidas Originals store. Photo courtesy of Adidas

TURF BATTLE: Under Armour Appears To Have Won The The Former FAO Schwarz Space

It's been a tough fight, but it looks like rising athletic megabrand Under Armour has won out among the prospective tenants for the former FAO Schwarz store in the GM Building (pictured above). A couple of months ago, it seemed that Nike and Apple were vying for the space as a possible new home for NikeTown or as an above-ground expansion for Apple's 24-hour flagship store underneath the plaza in front of the building. Then, Under Armour stepped in as a surprise spoiler, and now C.E.O. David Plank has announced that the company will take 53,000 square feet of the former toy store on the ground and second floors of the building officially known as 767 Fifth Avenue. It's going to be a bit of a wait before we see what Plank is calling "the most breathtaking and exciting consumer experience ever conceived at retail" as the company is not taking possession of the space until sometime in 2018. Apple is still reportedly going to be using some of the space as a temporary store while it renovates its flagship under the iconic cube entrance, but it appears that Under Armour has won the contest to stake its claim as a brand worthy of one of the most high profile retail spaces in the city.

(Commercial Observer)
Previously:
Turf Battle: Is Under Armour Fighting Nike And Apple For Space In The GM Building?

 

COLLABORATION ANTICIPATION: Get Ready For Adidas x Yeezy Stores Coming Soon

 

Courtesy Photo: Eric Liedtke of Adidas with Kanye West

It may not be the first musician/sneaker collaboration, or even the best, but Kanye West's Adidas x Yeezy team up is set to be the biggest. While the collection's Yeezy Boost shoes have been an unqualified hit, selling out almost instantaneously, the apparel and accessories have been a rockier road. First shown for Fall 2015, they were surprisingly well-received but the press and retailers, but upon delivery, the high prices for sweatshirts and stretch separates rattled even manufacturer Adidas, who stated that they would only be working on the shoes going forward. The Spring 2016 apparel line seems not to have materialized, and the coming Fall line boasted glittery collaborations with Balmain shown at a combination fashion presentation/album release party at Madison Square Garden that threatened to overshadow anything else that may have happened during Fashion Week. Now that the dust has settled, Adidas is back in the fold with plans for the future that include not only more Yeezy sportswear, but performance athletic wear and freestanding retail stores. A whole new division, Kanye West + Adidas has been created to produce Yeezy products for men and women based out of Adidas U.S. headquarters in Portland, Oregon.
Adidas group executive board member Eric Liedtke calls the West "a true creator who has the ability to see things others don’t". A timeline for the full flowering of the collaboration is unclear, but it seems likely that New York would be high on the list —if not at the top— of locations for one of the new stores. If there is one thing we have learned about West as a showman, it's that he doesn't like to come at these sorts of reveals in a normal way. A last minute addition to either the upcoming men's or later women's New York Fashion Weeks would not be out of the question, but then neither would a crashing of Paris Couture Week, so keep an eye out for Kanye's next sneak attack as his apparel ambitions seem, against all odds, to be taking shape in a big way.

 

Adidas and Kanye West Step Up Collaboration (WWD)

COLLABORATION ANTICIPATION: Under Armour Taps Tim Coppens To Burnish Its Fashion Image

Courtesy Image via businessoffashion.com

Last week, we suggested that athletic giant Under Armour lacked the prestige to make a case for a major flagship store that might appear in the GM Building.
We may have spoken too soon.
This morning, Business of Fashion announced that Belgian born, New York based designer Tim Coppens would be adding to his duties at his own label and joining Under Armour as  executive creative director of Under Armour Sportswear, a new, more upscale casual sub-brand for men and women to be known as UAS that will appear in stores this fall (see the logo at left). While Coppens has long incorporated athletic elements in collections for his own five-year old label, and designed for Adidas and Ralph Lauren's RLX performance athletic wear line, the UAS label will be Under Armour's first collection not designed specifically for sport, but for every day casual wear. The label will include apparel, shoes and accessories for men and women as a complete lifestyle statement, but aside from the brand's flagships in New York and Chicago, the line is expected to be found in department stores which do not typically carry the main Under Armour label, and have yet to be identified.
“It’s not activewear. It’s not athleisure,” Ben Pruess, Under Armour's senior vice president of sportswear tells BoF, “It’s very specific to this idea of young, ambitious, new generation of clothing.” Coppens calls the line “casual, lifestyle-directed” and promises that it will incorporate the technical innovations that the brand has pioneered in athletic wear into casual clothes for what he calls an "ambitious generation".
It's a natural brand extension for the athletic brand which is already worn as casual wear by many of its customers, but it is also the company's pitch to gain the kind of prestige that Nike and Adidas and even Puma have acquired over the years. Those brands have sub collections that are regularly found in influential fashion stores like Barneys, Opening Ceremony, Colette and Dover Street Market. They can boast of collaborations with celebrities and designers like Raf Simons, Rihanna, Pharrell Williams, Rick Owens, Undercover's Jun Takahashi, Riccardo Tisci and Olivier Rousteing, whose latest Nike collaboration happens to launch today. It remains to be seen if UAS will be able to scale those fashion heights, but including the CFDA darling Coppens will go along way toward ingratiating Under Armour to the kind of fashion insiders who are in a position to get the label in front of the customers it seeks. Under Armour has clearly been working to be counted among the likes of Nike and Adidas as a brand that goes beyond just providing quality athletic gear, and now, all we need to see is whether or not they can produce a product that will get them there.

Tim Coppens Designing New Line for Under Armour (Business of Fashion)