Full circle: Pip Edwards reveals next move after leaving P.E Nation

Fashion identity Pip Edwards will return to one of her career alma maters, the denim brand Ksubi, less than three weeks after announcing her exit from P.E Nation, the brand she cofounded in 2016.

In announcing her next move on Instagram – where else – on Thursday morning, Edwards, who has just returned from an extended European break, says she was excited to be rejoining the brand she was part of 20 years ago. “A true full-circle moment,” she wrote.

The company said in a statement that Edwards’ role would encompass design identity, brand image, trend forecasting, and design innovation.

Ksubi chief executive Craig King and Pip Edwards, who has joined as creative director.

In a case of personal and professional colliding, Edwards – who last worked at Ksubi in the early 2000s in design, marketing, and brand strategy – shares a son with one of the denim brand’s original cofounders, Dan Single. The pair have not been romantically linked for 15 years – they split when their son Justice, now 18, was a baby – and Single left the business in 2010.

After Edwards’ first stint at Ksubi, she worked at General Pants, where she met Ksubi’s now-chief executive, Craig King. “Pip and I have always stayed close, exchanging ideas and bouncing things off each other,” King says. In 2022, Ksubi and P.E Nation collaborated on a denim capsule, which may have sown the seeds for Edwards’ eventual transition back to the brand.

Ksubi launched as Tsubi in 1999 before changing its name in 2006 due to a legal tangle with the US shoe label Tsubo.

In 2001, the brand caused a stir at Australian Fashion Week by sending live rats down the runway. And, in 2003, it kept media and VIPs waiting until the early hours of the morning for its runway show on Sydney Harbour, after which models jumped into the water.

Pip Edwards and Dan Single in 2006 (left) and a note Single wrote on the wall about Edwards at the farewell party for Hugo’s Bondi restaurant.

But in 2010, the brand hit even choppier waters, announcing it was being placed in voluntary administration with debts of about $8 million. It was eventually bought by private investment.

Single’s personal woes continued in 2017 when he suffered a near-fatal fall from a Paris balcony.

Edwards, 44, announced she was leaving P.E Nation last month, barely six months after her cofounder, Claire Tregoning, also left the business. Both women retain shares in the athleisure brand, which Edwards relaunched at Australian Fashion Week in May.

Edwards, who is based in Sydney, begins her new role from today. She is currently in the US, the brand’s biggest market, to launch a new store in New York. Last month, she was a special guest at the launch of Ksubi’s flagship Melbourne store, her secret still (mostly) intact.

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