It’s the sleeves. Fashion is so often about slimming the body and making it smaller, so you notice the sleeves right away. Sometimes they puff like delicate pastry outwards from the shoulder, sometimes they sit against the upper bicep but still balloon away from the body. Like plumage, they erupt from dresses and shirts. They are so big as to be subversive; they stop you in your tracks until you’ve seen so many of them, they hardly register.
The year 2023 marks 15 years of Aje, which now employs about 500 people and has welcomed two sub-brands, Ikkari and Aje Athletica. In a mark of its rapid growth, earlier this year it restructured at the top. Formerly it was Norris and Forest as chief executive officer and creative director, but now they sit atop what they’re calling The Aje Collective and have three new direct reports: the CEOs of sub-brands Aje, Aje Athletica and Ikkari, a wellness business.
“We were each other’s fashion sounding boards,” Forest says. She regularly worked at the shop when she visited Noosa. Their mojo was simpatico. They worked well together. But they had no idea how to make money. “We’ve never been trend-oriented,” adds Forest. “Each season we went with what felt right to us. We have become known for the drama and embellishments, but all of that was there from the start.”
“Retail was the way to make money,” he says. “People would pay us straight away, instead of this big long production cycle where you might never see the money, or you might see $1000 nine months later instead of the $30,000 they owed you.” Aje Athletica was launched in 2021 – not as a response to our COVID-induced leggings mania, Forest and Norris are at pains to say, but because the athleisure wear they were already making under the Aje banner was taking up too much space in their stores. “Athletica has allowed us to do something completely different,” says Norris. “It’s technical, it’s about function. That is new and exciting.
“Diversification is wonderful,” says Forest. “We want to cater to the complete lifestyle of the woman, her whole day.” Today, insiders say Aje’s revenue is somewhere between $100 million and $120 million, with the healthy margins one would expect of fashion. It’s well on the way to Zimmermann, which, according to its last financial reports , makes about $125 million before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. He agrees that his gamble on retail paid off. “Yes, it was a risk,” he says. “But we were stuck. And we were young. We were dealing with a lot of small stores, and if they went bust, we might too.
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