When news broke that London favourite Aaron Esh was taking the helm of leather jacket behemoth AllSaints last November, eyebrows raised. Since graduating from Central Saint Martins’s MA programme in 2022, Esh has fashioned a willowy, sweat-sheened world that draws on the libertine East London circles he came of age in. AllSaints, although the unofficial outfitter of Esh’s predecessors (think: Kate Moss trudging through the sludge at Glasto 2005, an AllSaints belt slung low on her hips), was, at this point, largely considered a high-end high-street label synonymous with a nostalgic-to-the-point-of-costume-y version of ’00s indie chic.
There are plenty of people who still vibe with AllSaints – head to any above-medium population city centre in the UK and you’ll likely find a bricks-and-mortar outlet with its signature walls of vintage black Singer sewing machines (an additional 350 locations worldwide contribute to its £500m yearly revenue.) But the outdated label needed an injection of youthful vim and a fresh creative perspective. “I’ve always said having a distinct point of view for the brand is what will create its success,” says CEO Peter Wood, who met Esh at the 2024 Fashion Awards and was sold by his “real life, not runway” pitch.
Esh knew he couldn’t just copy and paste his gritty luxury vision (modelled by the likes of Kiki Willems and Lux Gillespie in last night’s make-up), nor could it be a complete tabula rasa. The challenge was to tweak, edit and reframe the brand’s proposal to ensure its global audience didn’t feel alienated, while attracting a new clientele. “I wanted to push past this perception of AllSaints just being leather jackets and skinny jeans,” explains Esh, from the industrially retrofitted showroom space within AllSaints’s East London HQ, a lofty five-story Victorian edifice on the corner of Commercial Street. “We’re also thinking about the dad who might be drawn to the world of Loro Piana, but is after a more accessible price point; the pilates mum in LA; the City banker; the fashion guy in Osaka.”
The answer lay on Esh’s doorstep. “Spitalfields,” says Jamie Reid, Esh’s longstanding collaborator and AllSaints’s new image director. “The neighbourhood has been home to so many integral moments to fashion and culture at large” – despite its current salad bar gentrification. Case in point: Alexander McQueen’s seminal a/w ’96 “Dante” show and the fact Gilbert & George and Tracey Emin still have creative homes by the market. “Spitalfields has an unpretentiousness to it – and it just feels so British,” adds Esh, who reinstated the neighbourhood, instead of the loftier “AllSaints London”, in the brand’s name and logo.
“It’s really been about scrutinising everything in terms of fabrication, cut and fit,” he says, holding up a leather biker jacket, a cipher for his approach to his new job, and one of many plucked from the 30-year archive. If this sounds pretty old AllSaints, Esh is quick to point out the details that make it part of a distinguished new proposal. The leather – a buffed, stiff-yet-supple hide that feels like a notable elevation on the scuffed, ‘vintage effect’ you might typically associate with the brand; the hefty chrome buckle details; the boomerang-pitched sleeves. “We actually started by scrapping all of the existing pattern blocks and starting fresh,” asserts Esh, who attended every fitting for every garment. “I really believe that it is the sort of product people will shop for if we make it good enough.”
That there’s common ground with the hard-edged look Esh puts out under his own name is a given – he spends his time flitting between the two studios after his team of three also moved into his new Spitalfields home. At AllSaints, though, the vision feels tempered by a greater degree of verisimilitude – a sense of what this part of town’s Bright Young Things wear on the daily, rather than just on a night out. That’s partly because of the range. While the Seen By campaign – a multi-part image series launching AllSaints’s new era in lieu of a show, the first chapter of which, lensed by Alasdair McLellan – spotlights just under 20 looks, the inaugural offering spans a robust array of ready-to-wear and accessories. They’re the sorts of clothes that “make me feel just like myself to be honest,” says Lux Gillespie, who contributed to the Seen By series. “There’s a sense of luxury elevation, but mainly, I just feel good knowing that my leather trousers or peacoat fit me the way I want them to – and that they look cool as fuck.”
Of course, East London wasn’t built in a day – nor by one 34-year-old figuring out how to “wear many hats”. Instrumental to Esh’s vision is the inner circle he’s brought on board to supplement the 30-strong design team he discovered on arrival (more than you’d find at a number of Paris’s well-reputed houses). Since then, he’s also brought on senior designers from the likes of Burberry, Tom Ford and Marni, as well as legendary stylist Katy England, the former right hand of Alexander McQueen. “There’s an authenticity that comes from us knowing each other so well from being in the same social circles,” notes Esh, with England adding: "Aaron has a very instinctive way of working and a real confidence in his point of view. His own label is a deeply personal creative expression, whereas at AllSaints the focus is on shaping that vision for a wider audience. They serve different purposes, but both come from the same place of real authenticity.”
“Peter, our CEO, was actually saying that, for the first time in a long time, there’s this spirit of a start-up – which is all I know.” Is start-up gumption enough to reliably steer a ship of AllSaints’s scale? “If I didn’t think that this had the potential to be globally successful, I wouldn’t have joined. No money in the world could make me do something that would kill 10 years of hard work to get here,” adds Esh. “I’m really confident in what we have here. The people are too good for it not to work out.”
