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Usually, people come back from the August bank holiday feeling slightly more refreshed. But that won't be the case for AllSaints' chief creative officer Aaron Esh. He'll have spent last night at the East London brand's flagship store, helping the visual merchandising team and those on the shop floor unpack and lay out his first collection.
“They're doing an all nighter, it's a big job. It's important for me to go in and do the whole night," he tells me. “I'm going to go in and… help steam, I don't know!" he laughs. “But I'm really excited.”
We're sitting in the AllSaints head office the Friday before, overlooking those on the pavement who've started their weekend early, window shopping on Commercial Street. Esh, who's wearing a striped shirt, white tee and jeans, can't relate. For him, it's “the last working day” to get things done, and yet he's managed to squeeze me into his schedule to talk about the menswear that'll soon be laid out on the rails.
The moment comes after nearly ten months of work, having officially joined the brand last October. His role goes beyond just designing the clothes, too. He's overseen the redesign of their website and all the copy on it. There's a new logo. They're launching an editorial platform, too, with a physical zine, called The Ram, that will drop during London Fashion Week and will be free in their stores. There are noticeable changes, but the heart of the brand is still the same.
“I guess the word rebrand is something that we don't particularly want to use,” he says. “It's more about reclaiming what AllSaints was and making it feel relevant today. The business went in a certain direction. And just how when someone new comes in [-to any fashion business], it then becomes more about their view on the world; on fashion, on product. The CEO [Peter Wood] has empowered me to do that.”
That type of support is important when the job at hand is so big. Esh says that around 90-95 per cent of the womenswear product has been moved on, with his own vision taking its place. But it was less so for menswear. He notes there were some pieces of “knitwear and jackets that have been going for a long, long time, but were actually really good” and so the team just reworked the fit to modernise it.
He spotlights a double-breasted Herringbone coat, as well as a leather pea coat that “feels really timeless and characterful in an old AllSaints way” as key pieces in his first collection. The Ramskull logo, which is a signature of the brand, appears on clothes because he feels “there's value in like that kind of iconography”. At the same time, leather is still an important pillar, but is done in new colours and shapes that feel newer. For denim, he's designed five fits that will be mainstays during his time at the brand. The only change season to season will be the washes.
Esh tells me he believes men shop in a simple way. They find a pair of jeans or a T-shirt that fits them well, and buy multiples of that for their wardrobes. With that in mind, details have been meticulously considered. He's fitted every garment for this collection himself – around 600, if you're wondering – to ensure that they feel like real clothes to be lived in.
“What makes a Tom Ford jacket a Tom Ford jacket is the finishing. It's the lining. It's the material on the inside of the cuff that hits your hand. It's all those small things that maybe go over someone's head – and will probably go over someone's head, and that's okay," he says. “But especially for the men's, we've taken that level of consideration in how we've designed the clothes. When someone puts it on, it does not look like this kind of square, computer-designed jacket.”
He works at AllSaints alongside his own namesake brand, which he launched in 2022 after graduating from Central Saint Martins. In that first year, he reached the finals of the LVMH Prize. That, alongside being a born-and-bred East Londoner himself, will have played a part as to why the high-street mainstay will have been drawn to Esh. But for him, it's his teen memories that enticed him to the brand.
“I had a pair of AllSaints boots, and I honestly think that I snogged girls at school because of those boots,” he says laughing. “That was my perception [of the brand], is that I was cool because I had those boots.”
I recount my own AllSaints piece that made me feel ‘cool’. It was a sky-blue leather biker jacket that I'd saved up for after working at my first job for months. I wore it incessantly, and still remember the feeling of the butter leather against my fingertips. I think about it from time to time. Esh nods in agreement as I speak. It this type of connection to the brand that swayed him to take the job.
Not long after he got that call, himself and Katy England, fashion stylist and collaborator that's styled this first campaign, jumped in a cab and decided to pop into one of the AllSaints stores.
“I said to her, ‘I feel like this could be really great.’” He says. “If you do this well; commercially, visually, product-wise,” – he gestures to the office surrounding him – “it's way cooler than doing some pretentious fashion show where no one buys clothes.”
“Like, getting the young girl to save up for her leather jacket and be able to actually buy it full price is way cooler, and it doesn't really exist at the moment. I really saw the opportunity because it made me feel really excited.”
I'm conscious of it being the last working day before the collection drops, and so we wrap up and say our goodbyes. I walk out the office, go around to the front of the building to find their flagship, with its red-brick exterior and name spelt out in lights. I think about popping in, but decide there's no point and head home instead. Better off swinging by next week, to witness the next cohort of kids obsessing over the clothes.