What They Did to No74

I keep ending up at the adidas store on Torstraße in Berlin. Not that I’m hunting for specific shoes—it’s more like the kind of place you drift into when you’re with people and a few drinks deep, and you look up realizing an hour’s passed while you were examining sneakers by Raf Simons or Rick Owens or Pharrell Williams. People who actually care about proportion and material. The store had that pull.

They just redid it. Metal frames, soft colors, clean angles—some Berlin designers stripped it down and built it back up. It’s the kind of redesign that could feel sterile or feel right, and they got it right.

No74’s been on Torstraße since 2008, which in Berlin time is practically permanent. The street reinvents itself constantly but this place stayed and just evolved, which says something about knowing what you care about and not bending for fashion cycles.

I haven’t been back since the work. But I will. Curious what the light’s like in there now.