Nike Unlaced
Nike Unlaced launched as Nike's first women's-exclusive sneaker boutique to serve an audience the industry had long overlooked. “Don’t shrink it and pink it” was the rallying cry we responded to. Our Digital Brand Experience team was tapped to design the platform experience through Nike's first cross-team creative collaboration of its kind. Together, we shared knowledge that influenced both the digital and brand strategy for the longevity of the boutique.
It debuted alongside a physical pop-up boutique at Paris Fashion Week 2018, positioning Unlaced as a major cultural moment in sneaker history.
Role
Digital Brand Design
Experience Design
Concept Development
The initial brief was intentionally open: a digital women-led boutique, evolving as branding was secured. Over the course of the project, I explored concept directions, translated a bespoke identity into a working digital environment, and collaborated with our engineers to ship a launch experience that pushed our CMS past its default limits, all in close partnership with the Nike Women’s Brand Creative studio.
Approach
What should this boutique be, and who was it for?
We explored four distinct concepts, each with a different point of view on the boutique's voice, browsing behavior, and cultural stance. The goal was to discover a direction that would provide the most diverse reach, and give the brand and marketing partners enough range to react to before an identity was locked.
01
Endless Inspiration
Magazine-cutout nostalgia meets endless social scroll. Fully shoppable, mixing seasonal campaign imagery with product pages and UGC to root the boutique in how discovery already happens.
Saturated + Inspirational + New
02
Intimate Vignettes
#WDYWT (What Did You Wear Today?) was at its peak on social media, and style influencers ruled the platform. Interview-style spotlights let the community speak to each other authentically about their personal sneaker journeys.
Minimal + Relatable + Intimate
03
The Ultimate Blog
A culture hub linking out to articles, interviews and an archive built for longevity and re-engagement. Reminiscent of popular style blogs at the time, such as Refinery29, High Snobiety, and Hypebae.
Traditional + Editorial + Trustworthy
04
The Department Store
For the shopper who came here to buy, not browse. The “window display” welcomes the consumer with newness first. Clear paths from collection to product page. Modeled after premium retailers like Net-a-Porter and Nordstrom, and grounded in the sneakerhead's habit of shopping with intent.
Efficient + Direct + Intuitive
Branding
As we continued to explore, Brand Creative and Schick Toikka defined the boutique's identity, unveilling the name - first Laced, then Unlaced - and a bespoke, twisted-lace riff on the typeface Dia.
Image Credit: Schick ToikkA →
My role was to translate that system into the digital environment: applying the typography, tone, and visual identity, and shaping how four story pillars would live inside it.
Featured Story
Product spotlight featuring head-to-toe looks and styling inspiration.
Influencer Picks
The voice of the boutique was the sneakerhead. Featured stories dove deeper into the experience, spotlighting new and exclusive product and outfitting.
User-Generated Content
Real customer looks pulled from #WDYWT and Instagram, threaded through the boutique as cultural signal.
Customized Footwear
Nike by You customs from influencers and members, surfacing sneakers as a form of self-expression.
Build
With the identity and a content strategy in place, we aligned with brand and platform stakeholders on a leaner path: pivot from a bespoke off-platform microsite to an on-platform build inside Nike.com. Traded some visual freedom for platform reach, stability, and speed to launch.
We reused Nike.com's existing systems where possible, and created a visual and experiential distinction between Unlaced and the rest of the site. I explored component re-configurations, combinations, and typographic customizations to challenge our capabilities and influence the future of our CMS.
Design
What emerged was a combination of the Intimate Vignette and The Department Store.
The layout was refined into a modular framework: dynamic enough to swap in new photography, product, and voices as the boutique evolved but disciplined enough to fit alongside the rest of Nike.com without losing its point of view.
What had started as an experimental microsite became a platform-native experience with an editorial voice.
Nike Unlaced launched as a cultural moment, and gave the platform a template for what women-first storytelling could look like at Nike.
