Aje’s Edwina Forest and Adrian Norris celebrate 15 years in business
The fashion brand has reshuffled its business and has its sights on the US but remains Australian to its core.
Edwina Forest, co-founder and creative director of Australian brand Aje, which this year celebrates its 15th anniversary, loves the mad rush before a fashion show.
Speaking a few days out from the brand’s show at Afterpay Australian Fashion Week – this year to be held at the new Sydney Modern art gallery, the first fashion show to be held in the space – Forest describes it as “a moment that everything becomes very tangible … the dream becomes tangible”.
For Forest this collection presents the opportunity to look at where the brand has come from and offer some ideas on where it’s headed.
“In realising it was our 15-year anniversary, sometimes we lose track of the time,” she says. “We wanted the collection to look and to feel like the true essence of us. At 15 years we’ve grown, we’ve changed, (become) a company that’s much bigger than when we began.”
The brand has certainly experienced change. As Adrian Norris, co-founder and Aje Collective group CEO points out, it now has 42 stores across its Aje and Aje Athletica businesses, with more to come, and employs 600 people.
Earlier this year the brand embarked on a foray into wellness with Ikkari, a range of skincare products, supplements and fragrances, and brought in three new chief executives across the divisions of the brand: Aje, Aje Athletica and Ikkari. For Norris this structural reshuffle represents the growth of the brand. “The three CEOs are some of the most impressive women in business that I have come across. And knowing that they’re leading their individual teams and those individual businesses’ success, which helps the entire (company), is what I was really excited about,” he says.
“Eddie and I have always just got in and done the work and everything, (but) I think this allows both of us to become really strategic in the parts that we’re focusing on and get out of the everyday.
“I love the everyday running of a business, but it does allow you just time to think on the bigger picture and make sure that we’re directing everyone in the right direction.”
A big focus is international expansion, particularly in the US.
Last September the brand dipped its toes into New York Fashion Week with a presentation held off-schedule. Aje will soon open its first US store, in New York.
Forest thinks the brand’s resonance also captures the idea that it’s always holiday time somewhere in the world. Or at the very least, people want to feel like they’re on one. “I think Australia and Australian style, definitely Aje style, has got this sense of effortlessness and freedom. Still with the trappings of the construction and the design elements, but it definitely has a wearability … and I think a joy,” she says.
Afterpay Australia Fashion Week runs in Sydney from Monday May 15 to Friday May 19.