“I wanted to come and do my thing like I’ve been doing it,but in a heightened way,” Esber,36,says from the back of a taxi,rushing from venue inspections to model bookings. “It’s reiterating what the brand is and what we’re known for. This is the billboard moment.”
Since graduating alongside Dion Lee from Sydney’s Fashion Design School at TAFE in 2008 and staging a joint presentation with Kym Ellery at New York Fashion Week in 2012,Esber has been the tortoise while his peers raced towards fashion fame.
Lee and his dark,club kid couture are enmeshed on the New York calendar,while Ellery showed at Paris Fashion Week in 2013,beforeclosing her Australian business in 2019 with debts of $2.6 million.
In that time,Esber has patiently grown his Australian production team to 35 people,while fine-tuning an intelligent and sexy aesthetic which has had the stylists of Dua Lipa,Kendall Jenner and Priyanka Chopra Jonas keeping couriers busy.
“The world has responded to dressing with the beach culture in mind and that definitely influences my work,” Esber says. “Living in Sydney it is a part of who I am and that speaks to the yearning for escape customers have wanted since COVID.”
“That connection to nature has always been important in the collection. I’ve been putting more concept into the clothes and the collection we are showing is the manifestation of that.”