Three months after splitting with jeans label Ksubi after reportedly being too traumatised by December’s Bondi Beach terrorist attack to continue the association, fashion influencer Pip Edwards is back with three new business partnerships.
On Monday, fashion label L’Idee Woman confirmed to industry title Ragtrader it has appointed Edwards as creative director of its forthcoming Australian Fashion Week show.
Australian Fashion Week will be held from May 11-15 in Sydney.
The L’Idee Woman announcement arrived on the heels of news Edwards and her son Justice Single, whom she shares with original Ksubi/Tsubi co-founder Dan Single, will front a Mother’s Day ad campaign for British urban fashion label SuperDry, also slated for May.
From SuperDry to L’Idee Woman, the announcement comes after human billboard Edwards plumped visually for yet another fashion label, luxe heritage Italian fashion brand Missoni, in November at a summer resort-style infinity pool club for Crown.
Edwards is a Crown ambassador.
The timing of the Missoni promotion raised eyebrows in the fashion industry, coming as it did the same week back-from-the-brink-again denim brand Ksubi launched a four-piece women’s capsule collection designed by Edwards.
The two fashion labels could not be at further ends of the fashion spectrum – Missoni represents heritage European luxury, while Ksubi represents street rebellion.
Edwards had rejoined Ksubi as the brand’s creative director in September 2024 – 20 years after first leaping on board as a PR spinner for the label in 2004.
She later moved into design before moving on from the label and starting P.E. Nation in 2016 with creative force Claire Greaves (formerly Tregoning). Following some instability in 2024 and reports of a fallout, both women walked away from the operation. Greaves has since returned to the label.
Talking about her Ksubi comeback in April 2024, Edwards told Forbes: “I have to approach Ksubi in a strategic way, learn the existing business, understand the team dynamics, and work my way in from the ground up”.
After going into administration twice following a trademark infringement dispute over the original spelling of the name, the label was passed around like a hot potato before the
licence was picked up by The General Pants Group in 2017 as part of a joint venture.
Finally, in 2020, it was offloaded to departing General Pants CEO Craig King, a longtime supporter of the brand.
Edwards’ return to the label was broadly celebrated by the media as a homecoming, however, a month after Ksubi launched Edwards’ first self-branded capsule collection on December 4, she exited the label.
Her departure came two weeks after two gunmen allegedly opened fire on Jewish revellers at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on December 14, slaughtering 15 people.
In a long social media post a day later, Edwards gave a first-person account on taking cover under a van during the attack, just two metres from the gunmen.
“We watched the gunman’s feet with his gun pace in front of the van right at our heads, using our van as his post. The shots kept firing and we rolled from side to side under the van to hide behind the wheels, as the gunmen’s feet walked around us, trying not to be seen,” she posted to Instagram.
She added she was “convulsing with fear, trapped, thinking this was it for us”.
Two weeks later, having partied with pal Jackie “O” Henderson over New Year, she retreated from Ksubi, with friends telling media the designer/marketer needed to step back from the label to prioritise her “recovery after the (Bondi Beach) ordeal”.
In the weeks that followed, she hit the slopes of Bagatelle Courchevel in France with mates, walked the red carpet in Sydney for the opening of Wuthering Heights, attended the opening of Sydney short film festival Tropfest and the Melbourne F1 Grand Prix as well as a swag of other suitably glamorous events including the opening of a Prada boutique in Sydney.
She has apparently rebounded with a vengeance.
The new SuperDry “Mum Knows Best” campaign and the L’Idee Woman collaboration come on the heels of Edwards last month announcing a new association with a supplements brand manufacturer.
