Aje SS27: Australian Bloom Takes Over Paris

At Aje, spring begins with the instant a flower gathers enough force to open. For Spring/Summer 2027, Edwina Forest and Adrian Norris built Unfurled around that moment of release, translating botanical energy into volume, surface and movement inside the 13th-century Collège des Bernardins in Paris.

Suspended Australian flora and water-filled installations turned the stone interior into a surreal garden. Across 43 looks, Aje moved from narrow, controlled forms toward increasingly expansive shapes, creating a runway that felt carefully paced from bud to full bloom.

Australian Botanicals Enter Paris

Unfurled grew from Aje’s collaboration with Australian artist Vicki Lee, whose underwater studies of flowers examine distortion, suspension and the strange beauty of forms seen through water.

Native plants including banksia, bottlebrush, grevillea and milk thistle appeared throughout the installation, while composer Ted O’Donnell extended the botanical atmosphere through sound. The collection focused especially on the first stage of flowering, when a bud begins to loosen and internal energy pushes outward, giving Aje a clear visual system for proportion, colour and fabric manipulation.

That idea allowed Forest and Norris to treat florals structurally. Fitted mini dresses and narrow knit silhouettes establish a compact beginning, then bubble maxi dresses, ruffled skirts and sculptural gowns introduce progressively larger volumes.

The Jouve Bubble Maxi Dress captures the season’s expanding logic through a rounded lower volume that seems inflated from within. The Isobel Petal Gown translates floral form into layered construction, while the Sabine Pleated Gown uses radiating folds to create movement around the body. By the finale, the Larkin Embellished Maxi Dress in Sunset Ombré reaches full visual release through colour, shine and surface work.

Volume, Texture and the Aje Silhouette

Aje’s silhouette language has always relied on the relationship between structure and movement, and SS27 pushes that vocabulary across several distinct forms.

Bubble shapes create rounded volume around the lower body, A-line skirts open gradually from the waist, fluid column gowns preserve a long vertical line, while backless dresses and fitted minis keep the body sharply defined. Oversized denim jackets bring breadth to the shoulders, and longline tailoring extends the torso with a straighter architectural profile.

Material choices give each silhouette a different physical character. Organza and chiffon create transparency and lift, georgette supplies fluidity, satin brings a polished surface, and knitwear follows the body with a softer line. Denim gives several looks a tougher foundation, while leather introduces weight and abrasion. Metallic embellishment, beadwork and petal appliqué bring reflective movement across the surface, turning light into another component of the garment.

The atelier work becomes especially visible in the hand-built floral elements. Vicki Lee’s imagery also enters through print and surface treatment, allowing botanical references to shift between recognizable flowers and abstracted colour. This gives the collaboration a broader role within the collection, extending the artist’s influence from the runway installation into the garments themselves through texture, placement and atmosphere directly.

Individual petals are formed, layered and placed to create dimensional surfaces, while beadwork requires hours of repeated hand application. Distressed finishes and crackled treatments interrupt smoother fabrics, and hardware adds a sharper industrial note. Aje uses these techniques to build contrast within a single look: translucent fabric can carry sculptural weight, while a structured piece can receive a painterly or botanical surface.

Several runway pieces show this process clearly. The Freya Embellished Maxi Dress in Emerald Croc combines a sleek elongated silhouette with a dense, jewel-like finish. An oversized mustard-wash denim jacket paired with a gold midi skirt brings the collection into an urban register, while the Carina Gown in black gives the early runway a controlled, almost nocturnal opening before the palette begins to expand.

Styling Lets the Garden Stay Alive

Styling keeps the collection polished while preserving movement. Satin heels, mirror-finish low shoes and beaded footwear extend the reflective surfaces of the garments, while oversized satin pouches offer a soft counterpoint to sculptural dresses. Silver disc belts and statement necklaces introduce circular flashes of metal, giving the body small points of light while preserving the construction.

Hair director Renya Xydis created an undone, tactile finish with natural movement, allowing strands to feel responsive to air and motion. That choice keeps the models connected to the living quality of the installation. The runway therefore feels composed yet alive on the Paris stage, with hair, accessories, light and set design all supporting the sensation of growth.

Colour plays a similarly active role. Soft neutrals and black establish the opening, followed by mustard, emerald, teal, cream, metallic gold and sunset gradients. These shifts give the collection its emotional pacing, moving from restraint toward greater warmth and saturation as the silhouettes expand.

Paris Becomes Part of Aje’s Growth Strategy

SS27 carries particular significance for Aje because it marks the brand’s second Paris Fashion Week runway, following its 2025 debut with Rebel Rebel. Founded in 2008 by Edwina Forest and Adrian Norris, Aje has grown from an Australian contemporary label into a broader fashion group operating under The Aje Collective, with Norris serving as group CEO and Forest guiding creative direction across Aje and Aje Athletica.

Paris now functions as a strategic international platform. By 2026, Aje operated around 45 stores across Australia and New Zealand, worked with over 70 international retailers and had established a concession at Printemps in Paris.

The company is also experimenting with a direct relationship between runway and demand. For Unfurled, customers can register interest in pieces after the show, receive confirmation when selected looks enter production and gain early access before wider release. This approach gives Aje useful information about customer appetite while allowing the runway to feed directly into merchandising decisions.

That operating model mirrors the collection’s central image. Aje is expanding internationally through measured openings across retail, wholesale and direct customer engagement, while keeping Australian nature, sculptural femininity and handcrafted surface work at the centre of its identity. Unfurled therefore marks a creative and operational step forward: the brand arrives in Paris with a clearer global shape, and its next phase of growth is already opening.