The Aje
Spring/Summer 2027 collection, Unfurled, is inspired by flowers
blooming, but don’t expect any ditsy prints. “We wanted to explore
our own way of doing a floral print without it being a pretty
repeat,” says Edwina Forest, who co-founded the Sydney-based label
with Adrian Norris in 2008. Known for a beach-goth uniform that
mixes leather and sharp tailoring with floaty dresses, Aje has
previously collaborated with the estates of two of Australia’s most
celebrated artists, Brett Whiteley and Minnie Pwerle. For their
Paris Fashion Week show this season, Forest and Norris took a more
hands-on approach, enlisting their good friend, multimedia artist
Vicki Lee, to create a series of hyperreal botanical images.
The trio met in Bali nearly two decades ago, when Lee was
designing the contemporary fashion line My Pet Square and the
Indonesian island was something of an incubator for young
Australian labels drawn by its skilled lace and leather artisans.
She later turned her attention to art, opening her own gallery in
Sydney and working with brands including Chanel. “Our friendship
over the decades made it much easier to trust the artistic fruition
of the project, which, for me, is obviously the most important
aspect of anything I do,” says Lee. “Trust gives you the freedom to
experiment, to follow an idea and to let the work become what it
wants to become.”
of Aje.
For Unfurled, Lee revisited a process she first explored in a
2017 photo series with photographer Ted O’Donnell, suspending roses
in water, adding drops of paint, and photographing the pigment
dispersing around them. This time, she worked with native
Australian species including wiry grevillea, pom-pom-like waratah,
dense banksia cones, and woody gumnuts. “They’re actually quite
weird and sculptural, almost a bit aggressive,” says Forest of the
qualities that made them a natural fit for Aje’s harder-edged take
on femininity. In Australia, even the flowers have a certain
toughness. “They have to be to survive in the heat,” says
Norris.
Lee’s imagery appeared on vegan leather jackets and fluid gowns
alike, some slashed and shredded so the prints broke apart across
the body. Forest and Norris also interpreted her work less
literally. Sunray pleating mimicked the opening of a flower, while
cascading beaded fringe and tactile petal appliqué picked up on
another part of Lee’s practice: plant bio-sonification, in which
electrodes attached to plants register electrical activity that is
translated into sound waves. “Whether through color, form, light,
material, or scent, the medium is secondary to the feeling it
creates,” says Lee.
