Pip Edwards on the rebirth of P.E Nation, and taking activewear to new heights
The cult activewear brand has undergone an evolution
Lifestyle
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Cult-favourite activewear brand P.E Nation unveiled its new direction this week after much anticipation. Digital editor Holly Berckelman sat down with co-founder and creative director Pip Edwards ahead of the reveal to chat about the brand's evolution, the new collection, and why activewear has been turned on its head.
When P.E Nation’s closely followed Instagram account was surreptitiously wiped five days before its return to Australian Fashion Week, it was a telling sign.
Not of fabricated drama between creative director Pip Edwards and her co-founder Claire Greaves – who departed P.E earlier this year – but that the brand had undergone a renovation, and it was almost time for an open house.
“The past has been celebrated and now we pave the way for a new beginning,” Edwards wrote on Instagram, alongside a screenshot of a glaringly white feed and sombre ‘0 posts’.
“This fresh start has been initiated by wiping the slate clean to usher in a new age @p.e.nation #penation.”
Then, a few days later, with less than 24 hours til showtime, another post: “A new era is coming … Re / Creation. P.E NATION at Australian Fashion Week showing May 14 10am @p.e.nation #penation.”
What the style sect and activewear aficionados were left wondering, was what exactly could a new era of Australia’s most cultish activewear label actually entail?
When I head to P.E Nation’s head office in Alexandria, Sydney, four days (or two business days as the PR team reminds me) before the show, it’s surprisingly calm.
Expecting more of a Project Runway-style chaos ahead of the brand’s first Australian Fashion Week show since 2021, instead, the offices are bright and peaceful, punctuated with a cooperative hum.
The walls of the space are adorned with shots of the new collection, and a rack of clothes sits alongside Edwards’ desk – her own wardrobe, made solely of the new collection, prepped and ready for the week ahead.
Even at a glance, it’s worlds apart from the P.E Nation we know and love.
When I arrive, Edwards is in the middle of being tended to by a make-up artist, prepping her ahead of a busy day of meetings and a lunch with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese himself about sustainability in business. (P.E Nation is a B-Corp, a hard-won certification of top-tier social and environmental accountability and transparency).
But while I encouraged Edwards to continue getting ready during our interview, she can’t help but affix me with her full attention. It’s clear she cares, so much, about this new beginning for her brand.
“For me in my career, this is the big turning point,” she says. “I've done 20 shows globally around the world in my whole career, from Ksubi to Sass and Bide, and obviously a few for P.E. But this one's in my own right, like on me.
“It's a new start for P.E, an evolution start, and I guess for me in this new role…It's a team effort, but at the end of the day, this is my namesake.”
Over the past eight years, the brand has, by and large, been pretty consistent. Bold block colours, mesh cutouts, and tessellating patterns in clashing primaries were its calling. Vans-style checkerboard sat next to stripes of peach and red, while thick bands under the bust or atop the waist were emblazoned with its namesake.
If there was space for a logo, you can bet there was one, accompanied by maybe two or three others on a different appendage.
Looking back at the early collections, the pieces certainly represent a different cultural climate. But there’s no doubt that at every stage, the brand has captured exactly what ‘activewearers’ are drawn to – worn by ‘it’ girls and gym rats alike.
So why, many people have wondered, when the brand has been such a hit since launch, would you change the formula?
“We really hit our strides unexpectedly,” says Edwards. “[We had] crazy growth, and now we've done some really deliberate, considered, deep dives into the business. And we're really rock solid on who we are in this brand strategy.”
As she puts it, “We're ready for the next highway.”
So, what is that highway exactly?
“I guess elevated luxury, every day,” says Edwards. “It's very muted, it's seamless. It works really well in the wardrobe. It speaks to the modern woman in the way she lives her life. It's lifestyle-driven. It blends an active lifestyle, but with a fashion-first lens.”
“Fashion that moves with you,” she adds.
Where Edwards notices a particular difference between the P.E of then, versus the P.E of now, is “the original P.E was a fashion lens on an active lifestyle, and now it’s a fashion lens on a lifestyle that is... [more] today.”
“It's still got that personality and flair and I think what P.E will always be is the energy of the look, how it's styled and the way it's worn, and that's something that speaks true. But these pieces literally, seamlessly work into your everyday wardrobe.”
“Active fashion?” I float, a premise with which Edwards agrees to an extent, but clarifies “It’s active in the sense of a not so ‘hardcore turbo discipline’ active, but a lifestyle of movement.”
“[We tried] to find this balance – what are those pieces in that wardrobe that you can have a recreational life of movement and dynamic, but also being able to wear it throughout your day, every day.”
“Obviously there are active pieces, there will always be active pieces. But in the sense of a more recreational type of active.”
To the average shopper, P.E Nation was the Barry’s Bootcamp of the activewear world; sportswear for the hard HIITers and the Hot Girl Walkers. The brand boomed during Covid when, amidst lockdowns, working out was pretty much all we could do – outside of gyms, of course.
But in a PP (Post-Pandemic) world, priorities have changed.
“Coming out of it, everyone's just realised what they took from [Covid] was having more of a balance…trying to weave in more self-care, self-love, but also achieve that kind of movement.”
As such, P.E has evolved in that manner too. “It's about clothes that can take you from A to Z, but in a way that's fashion-first.”
“We are in the sport of fashion,” she says. “But it’s sports that go beyond that elite performance. I think everyone enjoys a level of sport. But it's their choice of movement” – be it watching your kid play basketball, going for a stroll on your lunch break, or heading to a Pilates class.
Speaking of fashion, one of the biggest style trends from the past few years is this hyperfixation on ‘expensive’ dressing. ‘Quiet luxury’ or ‘stealth wealth’ has seen people move away from bright colours and towards neutrals, and opting for quality rather than clear demarcations of brand.
Basically, the antithesis to the original P.E Nation.
When I ask Edwards if the new collection will stick to its heavily logoed guns, her immediate response is “Absolutely not.”
“We've built up such amazing brand equity. And there's a certain vibe and energy and a look, and when you see someone wearing P.E, you know it’s P.E now,” she says. “Now we're able to step back a bit and let the clothes do the talking and the energy do the talking. Without the logo.”
“Not completely,” she adds. “But that's not front and centre. It's more about the quality of the fabrics, the way it’s styled, the layering pieces.
As seen in full at the P.E Nation runway, the collection tosses aside most of the colourways of its earlier years – there’s not an orange or red in sight.
Instead, they’ve leant more heavily into pastels: a universally flattering taupe (“a great alternative to black”), a pretty pink, a 90s charcoal, and a periwinkle blue – all of which span the collection, from long-line skirts and cargo pants to bombers and simple singlets.
Sheer skirting was a trend across almost all the brands that showed at Fashion Week this year, and P.E Nation’s take is one of the best executions. The fabric is soft and, yes, very sheer, but in a way that’s modern, cool and widely wearable.
A black blazer with shoulder pads – which Edwards wore in our interview, dubbing it her “armour” – is as formal as the collection gets, but it could still very easily be worn with a pair of leggings, or over one of the aforementioned skirts, for more dressed-up version of a daytime look.
I spotted maybe two logos across all of the forty ensembles that hit P.E Nation's runway; subtle and white on the front of a singlet, or on the side of a collar. As Edwards said, the recognition of the brand no longer needs to come from shouting its own name – it’s baked into the core of the clothing instead.
Another of Edwards’ call-out pieces is a similar black garment, a “proper running jacket, that you would train in,” but with added shoulder pads. It’s a representation of the collection as a whole – “fun fashion elements that we've elevated, but based on actual everyday pieces.”
Fabric quality was a huge part of the P.E Nation ‘evolution’, and many of the fabrics were reworked for this second phase.
One fabric that appears throughout the new collection – particularly in the tight crops and t-shirts – is called ‘bodyluxe’, a “buttery, silky second skin” based in active properties. It’s incredibly soft and ultra-breathable, making it great for an everyday layering piece or more high-intensity purposes.
“You can just wear it all day,” says Edwards – including to bed, which she admits, pointing to her own top (a black singlet), she did, in fact, sleep in.
All in all, Edwards says the collection is about confidence, but a different kind to what we’ve seen from P.E Nation in the past.
“The last eight years have been all about colour clashing and being bold. And I think part of that was just being expressive and, you know, being fun. Sometimes you put your outfit on, and it would make you feel amazing.
“This one is just the quiet confidence. You know that [when] you put this on you've got fashion credibility. You know you're comfortable, but you know that you're ready to face everything. Quiet confidence.”
And as for Pip herself? Is she quietly confident or nervous about the big reveal?
“I’m actually really good,” she tells me at the start of our chat. “I haven't been good for a long time. It's been really consuming. But I'm in a really good place.”
“I'm feeling the vibes. The energy's coming.”
When I dig deeper about Edwards’ wellness practises, away from P.E Nation – as much as a co-founder can ever really be ‘away’ – her answer mirrors the same balance that’s laced through the brand’s evolved ethos.
“I do a lot of walking. I need to be in nature a lot. I really need to horizon gaze. I’ve got to get out to the ocean. I've got to know that I'm smaller than the rest of the world. I’ve got to see the expansion of how limitless the world can be,” she says.
She’s into spiritual healing too – “I’ve got crystals placed in corners for esoteric protection,” she says. “I do a lot of things that allow me to energetically be present, because my energy is what drives a lot of the business and the ideas, and I've got to protect that.”
It’s been a big few months for Edwards and P.E Nation, but based on the reception to the runway, it’s certainly been time well spent.
“Couldn’t be more humbled and excited by the overwhelming response of our @ausfashionweek show,” she wrote on Instagram after the show. “So excited to have seen all the parts magically brought to life with a vibe and concept that truly speaks to the fresh way forward.
When I ask her what’s next for the brand her response is “Next?! You want me to f*cking do more?!”
A fair response given the magnitude of what she’s just delivered for her brand. But she highlights consistency and maintenance of their new trajectory: “The highway now is about really driving this home.”
And what about her own personal highway? “My purpose has always been to touch women of the world,” she says.
“To get out into the world and share the energy.”
You can shop P.E Nation at pe-nation.com
Originally published as Pip Edwards on the rebirth of P.E Nation, and taking activewear to new heights
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