Aje

Aje

Aje was founded in 2008 in Noosa by Adrian Norris and Edwina Forest, after Norris could not find resort-to-city clothing to stock in Strada, the boutique he had opened there. The name is a contraction of Adrian joins Edwina, and it is pronounced age.

Dresses

The dresses carry the house idea, which the founders describe as duality: toughness against femininity, structure against volume. That reads in practice as enormous sleeves and hard cut-outs on clothes you could wear to a wedding. Norris studied fine art in Venice before any of this, which explains the appetite for a silhouette that argues with itself.

More Dresses

It nearly did not survive. Around 2013 the founders faced financial ruin and kept the business alive with family loans, then rebuilt it by pivoting hard into their own retail. By 2020 they were opening their seventeenth Australian store, and the first international one had already opened in Auckland in 2019.

More from the collection

Early production was rooted in Bali, using local artisans for hand sequinning and hand-cut leather, and that handwork is still in the brand's DNA. Aje opened Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia in May 2019, and has since grown into a group with Aje Athletica, Aje Denim, Aje Studio and Aje Wedding. Kate Moss, Beyoncé and Madonna have all been reported in the clothes, though without named occasions attached.

Our honest take

Aje is the most commercially fluent Australian label of its generation and the clothes are better than that sounds. Buy the occasion dresses, which is where the duality idea earns its keep, and ignore the sub-brand sprawl. One correction worth making: it is often listed as an LVMH Prize semi-finalist and it is not on the official list.