Gramicci Opens East London With a 2.5-Meter Shorts Sculpture

May 12. Gramicci's new East London store opened with a 2.5-meter-tall sculpture of shorts sitting in the middle of the space. Painted, striped, and hard to miss.

The piece was commissioned from creative agency Steep Learning Group, who told Dezeen they wanted the effect of "a giant doughnut outside a doughnut shop." The shorts are Gramicci's signature G-Pants silhouette, the wide-striped outdoor pant that's been in the line since the brand's climbing roots in the 1980s. The sculpture is painted rigid foam, anchored across the store's split-level layout.

The approach reads more like a skate shop or a toy store than the usual outdoor-brand retail template. No wall of technical specs, no fabric swatch station. Just the shorts, at scale, doing the work of both mascot and merchandising anchor. The rest of the store wraps around it: racks low, sightlines open, the giant pair visible from the street.

Gramicci has been having a moment in the past two years, largely driven by the return of wide-leg workwear pants and the brand's archive credibility. The G-Pants showed up on stylists' mood boards before they showed up in wholesale orders. This store leans into that: the sculpture is the Instagram moment, but it also signals the brand knows what it is. A climbing pant that became a city staple, now sold in a room with a giant version of itself as the centerpiece.

The store is in East London, no specific address given in the Dezeen piece. Steep Learning Group has worked with other brands leaning into spatial theater (they did a previous project for Carhartt WIP), but this one is the most literal. The shorts are the store. The store is the shorts.