FOOT LOCKER REWRITES FOUR DECADES OF SNEAKER CULTURE

Foot Locker

Summary:

• Foot Locker launched Then. Now. Always. on August 24, 2026, a short film directed by Saman Aminzadeh, with voice over by Goldie M.B.E. and styling by Rihannon Isabel, tracing sneaker culture from the mid 1980s to today.
• The campaign runs alongside a Back to School product push and a list of European exclusive releases from adidas, Nike, New Balance, On, ASICS, and Saucony.

Foot Locker wants you to know the brand was in the room before the room had a name. Then. Now. Always. is the retailer's new EMEA campaign, and the case gets made through a fast, dense minute of film rather than a slogan. You get four decades in sixty seconds: a 1985 park jog, a 1986 basketball court, a 1998 Paris metro chase, a 1999 nightclub, a football pitch, a family sofa, and a modern store floor. Each scene lands with a text caption playing like a punchline, and each caption does more work than the joke suggests.

The film opens on Flinford Park, 1985, with two joggers cutting through the trees. The caption reads "Back when trainers were just for exercise", and the joke is the point. Sneakers had a job before they had a culture. A Foot Locker Striper, the staff member in the brand's signature black and white referee stripe uniform, already stands in frame. The Stripers reappear across every era of the film, a quiet thread tying four decades of footwear together.

By 1986 the film shifts to street basketball and the caption "Then came Jordan in Jordans." This scene marks the hinge point of the whole story. Air Jordans took a basketball shoe and turned the design into a signature product category. The film treats the shift as the moment sneakers stopped being equipment and started being identity. Right after, in a scene built for laughs, a backboard shatters mid dunk under the caption "Bad time to be a backboard." This is the one purely comedic beat in the film. The joke lands because the moment interrupts the reverence with a broken piece of equipment.

The film jumps to October 1998 and a Paris metro tunnel, where a group runs past graffiti under the caption "'Sharks' roamed the city." This scene is a direct nod to the Nike Air Max Plus, known as the TN, which Foot Locker's own press materials describe using the Italian nickname "Squalo", or shark, a reference to the shoe's gill inspired side panels. Foot Locker's press release states the brand debuted the Air Max Plus in Europe in 1998 and describes the shoe as one of the most recognizable models in European streetwear. A held up polaroid photo follows, paired with the caption "And 'tigers' moved in packs", a reference to ASICS Tiger sitting alongside the TN moment.

June 1999 brings the film's most atmospheric scene: a nightclub lit in blue and purple, dancers moving under a caption reading "When it had to be Le Silver." The shoes in frame are silver, catching the light on the dance floor. The Italian press release ties this scene directly to two real nightclubs, Cocoricò and Number One, both fixtures of Italy's techno and hardcore scene in the 1990s. This detail appears only in the Italian version of the release, suggesting the nightclub references were localized for the Italian market rather than pulled from a single generic script.

The film then pivots to football. A man in a suit plays keepy uppy on a pitch under the caption "We fit the gaffers", British slang for a football manager, followed immediately by a close up on New Balance sneakers and the caption "And the armchair gaffers", a nod to fans who manage the match from their sofa. A montage under the caption "Bigger shoes" follows, moving fast through Saucony, On, ASICS, and Nike silhouettes to signal today's sneaker culture spreads across many brands rather than one.

The closing scenes bring the story back to the store. A Striper hands a box to a young customer under the caption "Now", closing the loop opened in 1985, with someone in the same uniform doing the same job decades apart. The film ends on the line "Then. Now. Always." next to the Foot Locker logo.

Alongside the film, Foot Locker rolled out a Back to School collection and a list of European exclusive releases split by men's, women's, and kids' categories, including the adidas Handball, Nike Tuned, New Balance 880 and 740, On Cloudtilt Remix, ASICS GEL-NYC and GEL-Cumulus 16, and Saucony ProGrid Omni 9. Marketing VP EMEA Slavka Jancikova said the film stands as a tribute to the people and communities who pushed sneakers past their original function and into culture. She added Foot Locker was present for the moments which changed everything and plans to stay present for what comes next. The collection is available in select stores and on footlocker.it.

Here is every era the campaign covers.