Founder Pip Edwards steps down from brand

Pip Edwards loves a good mic drop. In May, the fashion entrepreneur relaunched the athleisure brand she cofounded, P.E Nation, at Australian Fashion Week, to widespread acclaim. Less than three months later, in the early hours of Monday morning, she announced she was quitting.

“My time leading the brand as creative director has been an incredible run, and while I am handing over that role, I am maintaining my P.E Nation directorship and substantial shareholding,” Edwards announced on her Instagram account while holidaying overseas. “I am forever grateful for and proud of what we have created, and P.E Nation will always be in my heart and soul.”

Edwards took the reins of the business in March, following the departure of her cofounder Claire Greaves, who also retains a shareholding and board position. The brand, which the pair founded in 2016, is majority-owned by the Sydney-based fashion group Hotsprings, which also owns the Rebecca Vallance brand.

Under Edwards and Greaves, who had worked together previously at sass & bide, P.E Nation experienced a meteoric rise, winning the 2018 National Designer Award. The pandemic was also a boon for the brand – indeed, for the entire activewear category – but expansions into menswear and ski wear were less successful.

Last year, rumours circulated of a souring in Edwards and Greaves’ relationship, before the latter confirmed her departure from the day-to-day operations of the business.

In March, P.E Nation was honoured with the Grand Showcase at the Melbourne Fashion Festival, but initial plans to relaunch the brand at the event were scuppered in favour of a Sydney spectacle in May. The Sydney show was billed as a success that would help to revive the at-times flagging brand, whose graphic, colour-blocked designs were traded for something more pared back and tonal.

After the Sydney triumph, Edwards told this masthead: “You make such a stance to evolve … and then you’re like, ‘Is this going to be different enough?’ It’s that risk, but with that risk comes great magic.”

Now, in another magic trick, Edwards has vanished into a cloud of smoke (or a Swedish beach, according to her latest social media posts). As yet, no successor has been named.