Kennedy Nolan Brings a Haptic New Energy to Up There Athletics’ First Sydney Store.

Kennedy Nolan has form when it comes to retail with a pulse. The Melbourne practice’s 2023 flagship for Up There, tucked beneath the Herald and Weekly Times building on Flinders Lane, turned menswear shopping into something closer to theatre—abstract, saturated, faintly cinematic. Now, with Up There Athletics’ first store outside Melbourne, Kennedy Nolan has swapped spectacle for sensation.

The Darlinghurst store, on Oxford Street, Gadigal Country, is designed for all the senses. Underfoot, a rubber soft-fall floor gives with every step—springy, faintly bouncy, somewhere between an athletics track and the cushioning of a new pair of trainers fresh out of the box. It’s the kind of detail that announces a shift the moment you walk in, well before you’ve clocked the merchandise.

Above that surface, a flat, dull olive green washes across floor, walls and ceiling—a deliberately unfussy backdrop built to absorb whatever unpredictable drop of gear lands next. Fixturing is loose and mobile, with shelving and rails shifting between horizontal and angled arrangements around a grid of fluorescent red posts marching down the main merchandising wall. Running the length of the store, a line of cobalt blue mannequins reads like a stop-motion study in acceleration, while narrow lighting strips slice diagonally overhead, nudging the eye—and the body—forward.

Constructing a Persona: Up There Melbourne Store by Kennedy Nolan.

From bold colour choices, sculptural mascots at the door, clever use of integrated lighting, reflective metal surfaces paired with lustrous fabric choices across the fitting rooms, the physical gestures in Up There Melbourne work harmoniously to deliver an abstract space devoid of time or place.

“It’s a haptic experience rather than a visual statement,” explains Patrick Kennedy, “an emphasis on feeling the movement of a body through space.”

There’s clear intent behind all of it: heighten the sense of mobility as you move through the store. The red posts shift in parallax as you pass. The mannequins suggest motion without moving at all. The diagonal lighting pulls you onward. None of it shouts for attention the way sports retail usually does—the palette stays tertiary and low-key, the lighting warm and inclined to dim rather than showroom-bright.

It’s a smart bit of positioning for a brand straddling two worlds—serious performance gear and a customer who cares as much about how a space feels as how a shoe performs. Kennedy Nolan hasn’t dressed the store up as a gym, or down as a boutique. Instead, they’ve built something that behaves like the sport itself: kinetic, a little unpredictable, and entirely about the body moving through space.

A New Vision for Optical Retail: Six Six by Kennedy Nolan.

Not your average trip to the optometrist. Kennedy Nolan's design for Six Six centres on a zig-zagging display wall that orients most product away from the street, encouraging unhurried discovery over forensic browsing.

[Images courtesy of Kennedy Nolan. Photography by Anson Smart.]