Ksubi Creative Director & style icon Pip Edwards on fashion’s global future, and why New Zealand gets it right

The Bloody Marys arrive before we’ve even properly settled into the seats at Bistro Saine, and a serve of crisp fries is keeping us both going. Day three of New Zealand Fashion Week and the room is humming with the low-level chaos of a city mid-runway season. Pip Edwards is already three shows and one panel deep into the day, and she’s about to head upstairs for her pre-dinner glam, but her energy is unflagging—effervescent, sharp, warm in a way that makes you forget the time crunch we’re both under.

Edwards has long been a restless force in fashion. Her career arcs from the corporate offices of PWC, where she worked in risk management, to her first tenure playing with the experimental denim of Ksubi, to the global rise of PE Nation, which she co-founded and grew into a multi-million-dollar brand. Now, as Creative Director of Ksubi (a place she is very happy to return to), she is steering a label that has shaped streetwear culture from Sydney to Los Angeles, all while keeping one foot firmly in the rhythm of her own life. Among friends (can I call us that now?), she jokes that her creative instincts are balanced by an accountant’s head for numbers. Fashion has always been a business for her—but one fuelled by obsession.

‘I’ve been obsessed with fashion since I was three,’ she tells me, pushing her glass aside to pick at the fries between us. ‘My mum said I’d tear apart my wardrobe, draw things, DIY everything. My parents were both numbers-driven, so I’ve always had that balance.’ It’s something that translates for her right now. ‘You can love fashion passionately, but it’s still a business. You’ve got to understand the intersection of art and commerce.’

That balance has become her signature: remixing the everyday into something both disruptive and wearable. Edwards describes her approach as taking ordinary life—the clothes we run errands in, the pieces that sit at the back of wardrobes, the textures of a city street—and spinning them into something modern. ‘My mantra has always been to take an everyday scenario and remix it,’ she says. ‘It’s about filtering life through my lens until it feels fresh, desirable, and still a little disruptive.’

This philosophy isn’t just theory. It’s the reason PE Nation resonated when it launched in 2016. At the time, activewear was already a saturated market, but Edwards knew the gap wasn’t just in leggings or sports bras, but in outfitting—the way women actually lived. ‘I put everything on the line—all my savings, my time, my energy. I’d work all day, come home to my son, put him to bed, then work until 3am. I did that for a year straight on three hours of sleep,’ she recalls. ‘It nearly broke me, but it was worth it.’

That uncompromising commitment reflects a broader lesson she’s carried with her: risks only pay off if they come from instinct. She admits not everything landed: an early push into menswear at PE Nation felt forced. ‘Everything that’s worked has been organic,’ she says decisively. ‘Everything that bombed was forced. If it’s not instinctual, if you don’t feel it in your gut, it’s not right.’

Her instincts are sharpened not just by business acumen, but by deep immersion in the cultural languages of fashion. Denim is her mother tongue—it’s one we both share. She points out that every country has its own denim story: American rodeo, Japanese heritage raw denim, Australian coastal uniform. ‘Denim is universal, but it’s also hyper-localised. That’s the beauty of it,’ she says. It’s no accident that Ksubi, with its anarchic roots and cult following, has been able to crack the US—a feat she doesn’t understate. ‘No one cracks America. It’s impossible. But for us to have so many stores there, for it to be 80% of our business—that’s incredible. You need boots on the ground. You need to live the culture.’

Her appetite for cultural nuance is what makes her a particularly sharp observer of New Zealand Fashion Week. Despite her Kiwi heritage, this is her first time properly immersing herself in the schedule, and the experience has been unexpectedly moving. The week opened with an archival showcase of designers like Zambesi and Kate Sylvester: a moment of pause, a reminder of longevity in an industry that rarely slows. ‘Seeing those pieces again, I was just going, oh my God, I remember that,’ she says. ‘Opening the week with nostalgia, after years of pause, was important.’

What struck her most, though, wasn’t fashion at all but the ceremony that preceded it. She admits she’d always—like many—associated the haka with sport, and so the powhiri transformed her understanding. ‘I was transfixed. It was so powerful I didn’t even pull my phone out—and I take photos of everything. I felt like I was in another dimension with them. That’s what makes New Zealand so special. It’s ingrained, it’s respected, it’s part of life. And you feel it in the fashion too.’

When she talks about New Zealand fashion identity, it’s with both admiration and surprise. She points to the country’s near-mythic relationship with black, a palette that could easily feel flat, but doesn’t here. ‘You make it colourful through texture, fabrication, detailing, tailoring. You’ve mastered making black vibrant, and that’s a real skill.’ In contrast, she notes that Australian fashion leans into loud prints and boldness to create impact. ‘New Zealand’s strength is in the cut, the craft, the quiet power of fabric. And that’s what makes it world-class.’

Craft and heritage, she argues, are what position New Zealand designers on the global stage. ‘You’re amazing storytellers, and that comes from heritage. It’s in every stitch, in the respect for the land, the story of where it comes from.’ For her, this connection to roots is the point of difference in a saturated industry. ‘If you own your difference, if you lean into heritage and land and materials, that’s your point of difference. That’s what New Zealand does best.’

This conviction—that the future belongs to micro hubs rather than mega ones—shapes her broader view of where fashion is headed globally. ‘Social media has made fashion accessible, but it’s also saturated,’ she says. ‘I think the future is in the micro—small countries, small hubs, grassroots creativity. That’s where the intimacy is. That’s where the feeling is.’

It’s an answer that makes sense for someone whose career has always hinged on instinct and intimacy, whether that’s remixing the ordinary into something extraordinary, or betting her savings and her sleep on a business she believed in. Edwards doesn’t preach slowness—she admits she loves the constant churn of more, more, more—but she does believe in authenticity, in grounding creation in something deeper than trend.

When I ask her, as we pack up to leave, to distil New Zealand’s style identity into three words, she doesn’t hesitate. ‘Tailoring, dimension, textural,’ she says, finishing her Bloody Mary with a laugh. 

It feels almost like a manifesto, pared back to its essentials. And maybe, in the end, I think that’s Edwards herself: sharp, layered, textural. A creative director with an accountant’s pragmatism, a disruptor who insists on palatability, a woman who knows that sometimes the future is found not in scale, but in the intimate, the ingrained, the micro. I think it’s a nice change of pace.