P.E Nation co-founder Pip Edwards on the evolution of her personal style, her career, and her “sneaker obsession”
Australia’s reigning activewear queen Pip Edwards never met a shoe she didn’t like. With 300 pairs and counting, they form the cornerstone of her wildly colourful street-meets-luxe wardrobe.
Words by Patty Huntington, photographed by Bananas Clarke
This story originally appeared in The Fashion Issue of Harper’s BAZAAR Australia/New Zealand.
PIP EDWARDS RECENTLY upped her mirror selfie game. The day before Sydney’s June 2021 lockdown, the co-founder and creative director of Australian athleisure brand P.E Nation decamped from Bondi, her home of the past decade, to a two-storey apartment in Rose Bay. Now, instead of clocking her outfits of the day in front of a mirror next to her cramped shoe closet, the backdrop of her new home photo booth is a minimalist concrete-and-glass stairwell adjacent to her front door.
The mirror selfies make up just a fraction of Edwards’ Instagram photo diary. There she is, in P.E Nation’s HQ, on a shoot location, sweating it out at Fluidform Pilates’ Surry Hills studio, or taking in some “Vitamin Sea”, as she calls it, at her favourite Eastern Suburbs swimming spots: Camp Cove, Bronte Beach, Wylie’s Baths and Nielsen Park. If she wasn’t the face of P.E Nation (and an ambassador for a handful of other brands such as Estée Lauder and Mercedes-Benz), Edwards might just as well be a frontwoman for Tourism NSW.
But don’t call her an influencer. “I don’t really consider myself [one],” says Edwards. “I am of influence, 100 per cent. But this is my skill set; this is my training; this is my career that has led to a profile. That’s the distinction I’d like to make. If I was an influencer, it would just be a promotional thing. This is not that. I also run a business and a team of 55. There’s so much that goes on behind a photo.”