Aaron Esh on London, character studies,
and building a wardrobe
Aaron Esh on London, character studies,
and building a wardrobe
17 September 2026
17 September 2026
For Aaron Esh, clothes are about far more than what we wear. They are about where we come from and, perhaps most importantly, where we belong. As the London designer takes the creative reins at AllSaints, he is looking backwards in order to move one of Britain’s most recognisable fashion brands forward.
For Aaron Esh, clothes are about far more than what we wear. They are about where we come from and, perhaps most importantly, where we belong. As the London designer takes the creative reins at AllSaints, he is looking backwards in order to move one of Britain’s most recognisable fashion brands forward.
For Aaron Esh, clothes are about far more than what we wear. They are about where we come from and, perhaps most importantly, where we belong. As the London designer takes the creative reins at AllSaints, he is looking backwards in order to move one of Britain’s most recognisable fashion brands forward.
Watching Aaron Esh fit clothes is a useful way to understand him.
At AllSaints’ East London studio, he is less concerned with conjuring a “look” than with the tiny decisions that make a garment feel right: a hem; a shoulder; the pitch of a jacket; the weight of a lining; the fabric on the inside of a cuff, precisely where it touches the hand. On a balmy midsummer day, he is fitting a handful of looks from his debut collection. “It looks like it could be his own, doesn’t it?” he says, gesturing towards the model wearing a pair of frayed blue jeans and matching shirt. “Something really important is that whoever is wearing it, they look like the best version of themselves.”
For his first line, Esh went through AllSaints’ collection garment by garment. Instead of starting entirely from scratch, he decided to simply refit everything in his own way. It started with the simple white tee. Then, it was denim jeans, fitting every style on a real body alongside the design, technical and product teams. Construction, trims and linings were reconsidered. Esh is obsessive, but not precious. The point is to make clothes that feel instinctively right, rather than announce how clever they are.
Before Esh was announced as AllSaints’ Chief Creative Officer in 2025, he grew up in Islington and went on to study MA Menswear Design at Central Saint Martins. He launched his eponymous label in 2022, presenting his collections at London Fashion Week. The following year, he became a finalist for the LVMH Prize, fashion’s launching pad for emerging designers from around the world.
His own description of his brand is clothes that combine “establishment rigour with the rebellious spirit of youth culture.” Esh’s proposition was precise from the beginning: take the execution of Savile Row tailoring and mess with it a little.
Cropped jackets, languid trousers, and liquid jerseys gave traditional menswear a sensual, nocturnal quality, while complex techniques typically associated with couture and womenswear were applied to masculine archetypes. Cropped jackets exposed strips of waist. Trousers wrapped around the body. Tailored coats acquired strange, sensual volumes. The result was polished but never pristine. Elegant, but a little frayed around the edges. In essence, it has always been very London.
Watching Aaron Esh fit clothes is a useful way to understand him.
At AllSaints’ East London studio, he is less concerned with conjuring a “look” than with the tiny decisions that make a garment feel right: a hem; a shoulder; the pitch of a jacket; the weight of a lining; the fabric on the inside of a cuff, precisely where it touches the hand. On a balmy midsummer day, he is fitting a handful of looks from his debut collection. “It looks like it could be his own, doesn’t it?” he says, gesturing towards the model wearing a pair of frayed blue jeans and matching shirt. “Something really important is that whoever is wearing it, they look like the best version of themselves.”
For his first line, Esh went through AllSaints’ collection garment by garment. Instead of starting entirely from scratch, he decided to simply refit everything in his own way. It started with the simple white tee. Then, it was denim jeans, fitting every style on a real body alongside the design, technical and product teams. Construction, trims and linings were reconsidered. Esh is obsessive, but not precious. The point is to make clothes that feel instinctively right, rather than announce how clever they are.
Before Esh was announced as AllSaints’ Chief Creative Officer in 2025, he grew up in Islington and went on to study MA Menswear Design at Central Saint Martins. He launched his eponymous label in 2022, presenting his collections at London Fashion Week. The following year, he became a finalist for the LVMH Prize, fashion’s launching pad for emerging designers from around the world.
His own description of his brand is clothes that combine “establishment rigour with the rebellious spirit of youth culture.” Esh’s proposition was precise from the beginning: take the execution of Savile Row tailoring and mess with it a little.
Cropped jackets, languid trousers, and liquid jerseys gave traditional menswear a sensual, nocturnal quality, while complex techniques typically associated with couture and womenswear were applied to masculine archetypes. Cropped jackets exposed strips of waist. Trousers wrapped around the body. Tailored coats acquired strange, sensual volumes. The result was polished but never pristine. Elegant, but a little frayed around the edges. In essence, it has always been very London.
Watching Aaron Esh fit clothes is a useful way to understand him.
At AllSaints’ East London studio, he is less concerned with conjuring a “look” than with the tiny decisions that make a garment feel right: a hem; a shoulder; the pitch of a jacket; the weight of a lining; the fabric on the inside of a cuff, precisely where it touches the hand. On a balmy midsummer day, he is fitting a handful of looks from his debut collection. “It looks like it could be his own, doesn’t it?” he says, gesturing towards the model wearing a pair of frayed blue jeans and matching shirt. “Something really important is that whoever is wearing it, they look like the best version of themselves.”
For his first line, Esh went through AllSaints’ collection garment by garment. Instead of starting entirely from scratch, he decided to simply refit everything in his own way. It started with the simple white tee. Then, it was denim jeans, fitting every style on a real body alongside the design, technical and product teams. Construction, trims and linings were reconsidered. Esh is obsessive, but not precious. The point is to make clothes that feel instinctively right, rather than announce how clever they are.
Before Esh was announced as AllSaints’ Chief Creative Officer in 2025, he grew up in Islington and went on to study MA Menswear Design at Central Saint Martins. He launched his eponymous label in 2022, presenting his collections at London Fashion Week. The following year, he became a finalist for the LVMH Prize, fashion’s launching pad for emerging designers from around the world.
His own description of his brand is clothes that combine “establishment rigour with the rebellious spirit of youth culture.” Esh’s proposition was precise from the beginning: take the execution of Savile Row tailoring and mess with it a little.
Cropped jackets, languid trousers, and liquid jerseys gave traditional menswear a sensual, nocturnal quality, while complex techniques typically associated with couture and womenswear were applied to masculine archetypes. Cropped jackets exposed strips of waist. Trousers wrapped around the body. Tailored coats acquired strange, sensual volumes. The result was polished but never pristine. Elegant, but a little frayed around the edges. In essence, it has always been very London.
“I think that, for me,
is what AllSaints is:
it’s about identity. In the ’90s and ’00s, you knew who the AllSaints person was. I want to think about who that person is today.”
“I think that, for me, is
what AllSaints is: it’s
about identity. In the ’90s
and ’00s, you knew who
the AllSaints person was.
I want to think about
who that person is today.”
“I think what connects my work for AllSaints and my own brand is this idea of London-ness,” Esh explains. In his imagination, London is a collection of codes, where people tell you who they are without saying anything: through a trouser or a shoe, the way a jacket sits or the music they listen to.
As a teenager growing up about an eight-minute cycle from AllSaints’ flagship store in Spitalfields, he bought a T-shirt he’d wear to Camden skate parks, the garment becoming lovingly distressed and, in hindsight, a token of his misspent adolescence.
“I recently found a picture of me wearing that [AllSaints] T-shirt, and it really captures a certain moment in London, but also in my life, when I was discovering clothes, music, and going out,” he smiles. “I think that, for me, is what AllSaints is: it’s about identity. In the ’90s and ’00s, you knew who the AllSaints person was. I want to think about who that person is today.”
AllSaints was founded in London in 1994 by designers Stuart Trevor and Kait Bolongaro. It evolved from a menswear business into a global British fashion brand selling womenswear, menswear, leather, footwear and accessories. Its visual signatures became instantly recognisable: black leather biker jackets; beaten-up boots; washed jersey; skinny denim; muted colours; industrial stores filled with antique sewing machines; and, stamped onto T-shirts and sweatshirts, the slightly gothic Ramskull logo.
“I think what connects my work for AllSaints and my own brand is this idea of London-ness,” Esh explains. In his imagination, London is a collection of codes, where people tell you who they are without saying anything: through a trouser or a shoe, the way a jacket sits or the music they listen to.
As a teenager growing up about an eight-minute cycle from AllSaints’ flagship store in Spitalfields, he bought a T-shirt he’d wear to Camden skate parks, the garment becoming lovingly distressed and, in hindsight, a token of his misspent adolescence.
“I recently found a picture of me wearing that [AllSaints] T-shirt, and it really captures a certain moment in London, but also in my life, when I was discovering clothes, music, and going out,” he smiles. “I think that, for me, is what AllSaints is: it’s about identity. In the ’90s and ’00s, you knew who the AllSaints person was. I want to think about who that person is today.”
AllSaints was founded in London in 1994 by designers Stuart Trevor and Kait Bolongaro. It evolved from a menswear business into a global British fashion brand selling womenswear, menswear, leather, footwear and accessories. Its visual signatures became instantly recognisable: black leather biker jackets; beaten- up boots; washed jersey; skinny denim; muted colours; industrial stores filled with antique sewing machines; and, stamped onto T-shirts and sweatshirts, the slightly gothic Ramskull logo.
“I think what connects my work for AllSaints and my own brand is this idea of London-ness,”
“I think what connects
my work for AllSaints
and my own brand is this
idea of London-ness,”
Music was central to the proposition, too. AllSaints emerged from a Britain where clothes and music were deeply entwined, and the brand absorbed the rock, indie, and alternative scenes around it. By the mid-2000s, it occupied the same cultural weather system as Kate Moss, Pete Doherty, indie music and an East London the rest of the world was suddenly desperate to imitate. By this point, AllSaints and its brand signifiers were instantly recognisable.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what those connections to subculture, music and the artists of today look like now,” Esh explains. The result was putting people at the forefront of the brand, just as much as the product. “We don’t follow culture from a distance,” he insists. “We participate in it.”
Hence, his first campaign, photographed by Alasdair McLellan, styled by Katy England and art directed by Jamie Reid – the latter two his longtime collaborators – comprises 17 portraits of distinctly London characters. Esh selected his longstanding muses Kiki Willems and Lux Gillespie to appear alongside a broad, street-cast group of Londoners, including artists such as Dick Jewell and Zazou Roddam, photographer Angela Hill, a student, a carpenter, a chef, a skateboarder and other figures drawn from the city’s wider creative life. Different in age, occupation and background, they are connected by something less easily categorised. “Don’t you think they all look like they could be in the same pub?” asks Esh.
“We don’t follow culture from a distance,
we participate in it.”
“We don’t follow culture from a distance, we participate in it.”
“We don’t follow culture from a distance, we participate in it.”
Again, you sense Esh’s independent label in his thinking. His early shows were built around a creative community of stylists, artists, casting directors, photographers, DJs and models, who all looked like they could occupy the same after-party. His first standalone London Fashion Week show took place at Tate Modern and brought together sleek, exacting clothes that were London-specific and recognisably designed for after-dark.
Belonging is one of the words that comes up repeatedly when Esh talks. He insists that he is not designing for a single demographic, profession or social scene. His customers may be young or old, in the city or in the suburbs, dressing for the office, the street or the evening. What connects them is not uniformity, but character.
“Niche is really important, and small is really important,” he says. “But how do you let it build momentum to travel the world?”
That may be the real experiment at AllSaints: whether care, character and specificity can scale.
Perhaps that is what Esh is trying to do: take that feeling of being in Camden skate parks, pubs, markets and tailors, and amongst the musicians and all the freaks who make London so unique, and turn that feeling into something you can wear. It’s not a costume of Britishness, and certainly not an exercise in nostalgia. It is something specific enough to come from somewhere, but good enough to go anywhere.
“The idea of belonging,” Esh says. “That to me is what fashion is.”