There is a moment, walking into the Sporty & Rich flagship on Melrose Avenue, where retail stops and something else begins. The pale lemon exterior, the green-and-white striped awnings, the brand name appearing quietly in the large window. Nothing about it announces itself. And that restraint is entirely the point.
Emily Oberg modeled the entire space on her own Beverly Hills home. Not through a design brief handed to an interior architect, not via a mood board translated by a fit-out team. The store is a direct expression of how she actually lives, and what that means in practice is a space that moves through distinct moods the way a real home does: from an open welcoming entry through to more intimate rooms, each with its own palette, furniture, and pace.
The first thing that registers visually is the coral ceiling. In the deeper zones of the store, the lacquered salmon-pink overhead surface acts almost like a filter, casting everything below in a warm continuous glow. Geometric diamond pendant lights hang throughout. The custom furniture and the built-in fixtures read as variations on the same coral family, and the effect is total immersion, the sensation of a room that has been lived in and considered rather than designed for visual impact alone.
Then the space opens into something calmer. Oak panelling runs along the lower walls. Sheer cream curtains filter light from a large window behind an open shelving display of Adidas sneakers. At the centre of this zone: a frilled coral sofa and matching club chair arranged on a sage green rug, a low oval oak table, magazines, fresh tulips in cream vases. The brand name sits on the wall in a small, unhurried script. This is the living room. Unmistakably, intentionally, that is the whole idea.
The Adidas x Sporty & Rich collaboration is woven throughout without dominating: boxes stacked on shelving, sneakers nestled in built-in oak niches. On packaging displayed above the product niches, the words: “Be Nice. Get Lots of Sleep. Drink Plenty of Water.” The brand’s ethos made visible, almost as an afterthought. The California-lettered sweatshirts on the curved chrome rail, the collegiate graphic tees in navy, red, and white, feel completely at home here on Melrose, rooted in a specific strand of American casualwear that Oberg has always understood intuitively.
The standout piece sits in the window by the staircase: a large sculpted milkshake, pink with whipped cream and a cherry, catching the street light. It’s the most visually playful element in the store, and it reads immediately as Sporty & Rich: deadpan, slightly absurd, drawn from a very specific slice of American pop culture that has always run through the brand’s DNA.
At 5,000 square feet, the space comfortably holds the full breadth of the brand’s expanded ambitions. The café offers non-dairy coconut soft serve, matcha, cold-pressed juices, coffee, and smoothies with indoor and outdoor seating. A private pilates studio operates within the building, offering bespoke classes led by industry experts, a program Oberg has spoken about as central to the experience, not peripheral to it. For a brand that has consistently positioned wellness as a core value, this is the most complete physical realisation of that commitment yet.
The store is only Sporty & Rich’s second permanent location, following the Soho flagship that opened in New York in 2023. For a label that built its entire reputation online, and has done so without outside investment, the pace of expansion is measured and deliberate. Oberg has signaled interest in London and Paris as future destinations. If those spaces arrive with the same level of personal investment as this one, the brand will have built something genuinely rare in contemporary retail: a physical estate that feels less like a rollout and more like an open invitation.
We love when a space resists the urge to signal. The Sporty & Rich flagship on Melrose doesn’t try to communicate a brand identity through surface-level design gestures. It’s more comfortable than that, more grounded, more honest. And on one of the world’s most brand-saturated retail corridors, that self-possession is its own kind of statement.
