About AARDES 

Aardes (/ɑːdeəz/ pronounced ar-dez), takes its name from the Dutch word aarde, meaning earth. The philosophy behind the brand is to slow down, reconnect with nature and our surroundings, and create thoughtful fashion that doesn’t come at high human or environmental costs. The brand strives to combine crafts, philosophies and skills from around the world, looking at us all as global citizens of a world where language, traditions and fashions collide. The aim will always be for a cross-cultural celebration of connections focussed on the earth and its inhabitants.

Founded by London-based stylist Lauren T Franks, the brand launched in August 2019. After a decade working in the fashion industry, Lauren wanted to understand the challenges facing brands trying to produce responsibly.

Currently the garments are hand printed in Jaipur, India using the ancient, traditional craft of block-printing by a team of skilled artisans at The Block Print Company. We use GOTS certified organic cotton and print with naturally derived dyes. Aardes aims to work in collaboration with these highly skilled artisans to keep the art of block-printing alive, to spread awareness of the skills involved and support the craftspeople who continue to use this beautiful method of printing. Part of the charm of block printing is that the hand-made process can produce minor imperfections like slight misalignments in the print, this is how you can tell hand block printing from mechanical or digital printing methods.

The wearable art jewellery collection, Abscission, is made in collaboration with Dutch jewellery artist Drawn Jewellery. Each piece is handmade in London using solid, recycled 14k gold, moss agate stone and dried flowers. The concept came about during the Covid-19 lockdown when a need to collaborate and create felt more pressing than ever.

We strive to be as responsible as possible throughout our whole production. We make our garments and jewellery in small batches, producing only one collection a year, meaning it's unlikely you will see someone with the same piece as you; hoping you will treasure your item even more for its rarity.

This is very much the beginning of the journey, we hope you will join us for the rest of it.

If you want to know more or just say hello, please get in touch.

Collection 2 - Photographs by Yuvali Theis

Collection 1 - Photographs by Jelani Pomell