Store of the week: Sportswear retailer, Nike AF1 SoHo, New York

Nike’s AF1 store in the modish SoHo area of Manhattan is a case in point. This is an expensively fitted-out shop that celebrates a type of sneaker and basketball boot that is, according to the blurb that’s been stencilled to the large, beaten up gym-style brick wall in the interior’s main space, ‘The Future Of Force’.

Well, maybe so, but if this is a future store, it’s a case of retro being melded with technology to give a version of what may be ahead, but which looks rather more like a ‘back to the future’ vision.

This is apparent from the moment the approach to the shop is made.

The white sculpture that fills part of the window in the shape of concentric circles and which is backed by 1980s techno junk that has been sprayed white, is futuristic in intent but backward looking in feeling.

Now step inside the shop and the polished wood floor, with a matching floating ceiling overhead, does much to foster the idea of a place where exercise is taken. So too does the wall of white, unbranded training shoes that surround a video version of the sculpture in the store’s window.

Taken as a whole, this is a store that takes a micro-niche of a subcategory of sports shoes and then makes much of the shoe in question’s heritage (the AF1 basketball boot first appeared in 1982), by referencing this as the starting point for the future.

It’s an engaging way of doing things and, on a mid-January afternoon, the shop was busy.