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Short Biography

Aries is a London-based streetwear brand founded by Sofia Prantera and Fergus Purcell. The brand is known for its gender-neutral designs, its playful graphics, and its high-fashion take on streetwear.

Brand Identity/Design Philosophy

The brand’s identity is a blend of streetwear, high fashion, and counter-cultural influences. Aries’ design philosophy is to create clothes that are both cool and comfortable, with a focus on quality craftsmanship and a sustainable approach to production.

Notable Contributions

Aries has been at the forefront of the gender-fluid fashion movement and is known for its collaborations with a diverse range of artists and brands. The brand has a cult following for its unique and individualistic approach to streetwear.

Aries: Chaos, Culture, and the Cult of Anti-Fashion Fashion

In an era where luxury brands race to align with streetwear — and streetwear fights to be taken seriously in luxury — Aries stands on its own terms: anarchic, academic, gender-fluid, deeply British, and spiritually Italian.

If Off-White speaks in Helvetica, Aries screams in graffiti. If Supreme sells scarcity, Aries sells subversion.

Founded in London by Sofia Prantera and Fergus Purcell, Aries is not just a brand. It’s a movement of irreverence, an art project with commercial flair, a label that mocks the fashion system even as it thrives within it.

This is Aries — the punk poet of streetwear, and one of the most visually literate and intellectually sharp labels of the last decade.

The Origins: A Hardcore Fusion of Subcultures

Sofia Prantera, born in Italy and raised in the UK, was already a pioneer. Before Aries, she launched Silas in the ’90s — one of the first female-led streetwear brands, ahead of its time in blending graphics, function, and gender neutrality.

After Silas, Prantera stepped away from commercial fashion, disillusioned by the system. But then came Aries, co-founded with graphic legend Fergus “Fergadelic” Purcell (the man behind Palace’s logo).

The duo didn’t want to follow fashion. They wanted to explore:

• Ritual, chaos, and cultural symbolism
• Ancient civilizations and modern branding
• Gender-fluid forms and hyper-gendered satire

Launched in 2012, Aries became an underground label that ignored fashion calendars, luxury polish, and performative virtue-signaling. It built its world through zines, DIY visuals, cryptic Latin slogans, and unapologetic weirdness.

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The Aries Aesthetic: Controlled Anarchy

What does Aries look like?

It’s graphic-heavy, raw, but deeply intentional. Think:

• Acid-washed denim
• Tie-dye with occult symbols
• Classical art twisted with club culture
• Overprinted logos that look like bootlegs
• Text that reads like poetry and protest at once

The Aries woman or man doesn’t wear fashion to fit in. They wear Aries to dismantle the runway — and then walk it anyway.

Key collections have referenced:

• Ancient Rome
• West Coast rave flyers
• British sportswear
• Pagan mysticism
• Bootleg luxury from Turkish bazaars

Each collection feels less like a line sheet, and more like a cultural study filtered through a mosh pit.

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Streetwear for Intellectuals: The Academic Rebellion

What makes Aries different from most streetwear labels is that it’s smart — like, really smart.

Sofia Prantera once described Aries as a brand that “exists between worlds.” That in-between space — fashion and anti-fashion, male and female, East and West — is where Aries thrives.

Its campaigns reference:

• Marcel Duchamp
• Italian futurism
• Neo-paganism
• Modernist typography
• Post-punk album art

Aries is what happens when you mix Central Saint Martins with a squat rave, or a Renaissance gallery with a Camden thrift store.

This is not surface-level aestheticism — it’s visual semiotics in motion.

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Gender Fluid Before It Was a Buzzword

Long before high fashion caught on, Aries was already:

• Using male and female models interchangeably
• Creating unisex garments that felt personal, not political
• Ignoring silhouette expectations — cropped, oversized, flowing, or stiff

In Aries, a woman might wear a graffiti bomber with nothing underneath. A man might wear an embroidered silk robe over cargo pants. The brand isn’t trying to erase gender — it dismantles its coding.

And it does so without “neutralizing” design. It’s still aggressive, delicate, playful, violent — like identity itself.

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Aries vs The World: A Brand Without Competitors

Brand	What It Offers	Aries’ Take
Supreme	Streetwear + hype	Aries mocks hype and scalpers alike
Off-White	Streetwear + art installation	Aries is the art, no white cube needed
Palace	Skater boy energy	Aries gives you clubber, scholar, priestess
Rick Owens	Gothic luxury	Aries is street-level, druggy mysticism
Marine Serre	Futuristic sustainability	Aries is post-apocalyptic nostalgia

No one else fuses classicism, chaos, and clubwear quite like Aries.

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Key Products: Cult Pieces, Reimagined

Aries Temple Logo Tee

• Inspired by Roman temples and DIY punk zines
• Reworked every season in acid washes, silkscreen misprints, and cryptic colorways
• The brand’s unspoken uniform

Acid-Wash Denim

• Always custom-washed and dyed
• Often hand-printed with slogans like “No Problemo” or “ARIES ARISE”
• Genderless and perfectly imperfect

Column Robes

• Lightweight printed robes with Greco-Roman motifs
• Worn as jackets, nightwear, or ritual wear — buyer’s choice

Zodiac Jewelry & Occult Accessories

• Crystal pendants, charm bracelets, bandanas with esoteric diagrams
• Streetwear meets spellcasting

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Collaborations That Break the Format

While most fashion collabs feel like marketing, Aries collaborations feel like cultural experiments.

Notable ones:

• Aries x New Balance – Bold sneakers that look like post-apocalyptic relics
• Aries x Vault by Vans – Tie-dyed classics with surrealist doodles
• Aries x Hillier Bartley – Upcycled accessories made from factory floor waste
• Aries x Havana Club – A rum collaboration turned subcultural documentary project

Each one is about more than product — they explore materials, communities, and storytelling that push boundaries.

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DIY as DNA: The Zine Culture of Aries

Aries has always embraced print media, street photography, and hand-assembled zines. These aren’t side projects — they’re part of the brand’s ecosystem.

Zines include:

• Handwritten manifestos
• Collages of club culture
• Ritual-themed art direction
• Feminist essays and essays on semiotics

Where other brands use slick lookbooks, Aries creates visual mixtapes.

This is DIY not as aesthetic — but as an act of resistance.

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Sustainability: Quiet, but Committed

Aries doesn’t virtue-signal. Instead, it integrates sustainability into its creative logic.

• Upcycled capsule collections
• Made-in-Italy manufacturing for most garments
• Deadstock fabric use across seasons
• Packaging that’s recyclable or reusable

Aries believes in long-term cultural sustainability: create slowly, keep meaning, resist fast fashion.

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The Aries Customer: Not Who You Think

The Aries wearer isn’t necessarily “into fashion.” They’re into:

• Music, especially rave, punk, and techno
• Skateboarding or cycling culture
• Astrology and anarchism
• Art school, but not the curriculum
• Genderless expression and radical softness

They’re students, artists, stylists, or ex-hedge fund managers in burnout recovery. Aries doesn’t sell aspirational wealth — it sells aspirational weirdness.

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Retail as Experience, Not Showroom

Aries doesn’t rely on flagship stores or seasonal runway shows. Its digital experience is deliberately chaotic — like its zines, full of surprises.

You might find:

• Ritual kits next to T-shirts
• A playlist from Sofia next to a product drop
• Film collaborations or spoken-word poetry

And when Aries does pop-ups? They’re art installations, parties, and protests, all rolled into one.

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What’s Next for Aries?

Aries is growing, but on its own terms.

Expected directions:

• Expansion into home objects: incense holders, blankets, altar candles
• Short-run books and vinyl releases
• Crossovers with subcultures, not celebrities
• Global workshops on DIY design, tarot, or fashion upcycling

But above all, Aries will keep doing what it always has:

Create the sacred out of the street. Make chaos look like clarity. And make fashion fun again — without ever being cute.

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Final Word: Why Aries Still Matters in 2025

In a fashion world now obsessed with uniform minimalism, fast trends, and luxury recycling itself, Aries is the answer to the question:

“What if we still made things that meant something?”

To wear Aries is to align with:

• Disorder as expression
• History as playground
• Culture as critique
• And clothing as coded rebellion

Whether you’re in a rave or a reading room, Aries lets you be both icon and enigma.

You don’t wear Aries to be seen.
You wear Aries because you’ve already seen too much — and you’re ready to fight it with style.

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