With a focus on materiality and technique, textile designer Ruby Pedder is redefining the concept of couture. 

Ruby Pedder is only just getting started. At 25 years old, she has already decorated the foundational years of her career with notable triumphs: an apprenticeship at Vaquera in Paris; two resolved collections; significant collaborations with UBank Nike and Australian designer Jordan Gorgos; and the 2023 Australia Next Gen Fashion Week Designers Award. The Sydney-based textile designer has unearthed a detailed and highly skilled couture practice, one she oversees independently, from conceptualisation to hand drawing, screen-printing, design, pattern making, and sewing. Each step meditates on the connection between the wearer and the garment, a relationship the designer is completely absorbed in. “The process of making is such an embodied experience. You have to become a part of it for the output to be possible,” she shares. 

While Pedder’s process has many observable traits, her bespoke techniques result in unique outcomes where no two garments are ever the same. Pedder’s eponymous label is distinct for its use of smocking, an embroidery technique learnt from her grandmother whereby fabric is gathered into tight pleats, building a density and structural quality in the textile. Throughout the design process, Pedder produces many individual panels or patches of smocked fabric. She often screen-prints them with original drawings, designs or photographs. These panels are then pulled together to create a highly sculptural garment that, on its own, interrupts visual homogeny. 

Pedder emblazons many of her pieces with symbols of the ultra-feminine. Flowers flflin saturated hues, butterflies in flight and a full pair of lips, alluringly parted—these images tessellate across dresses, shirts and skirts, at once commanding strength and softness, structure and fluidity. The emotive world of Pedder’s designs is one that sits deeply with her typical wearer. “I like the idea that there’s a world resonating with other people,” she says. “My practice has always been led by the craft and it’s nice to think that the feelings that I put into my work have created a world separate the infrastructure that I built the world upon.” 

Pedder encapsulates her design ethos casually and concisely with the phrase ‘casual couture’, speaking to the union between the laid-back and the luxurious. Much of what we know of couture would have us believe that it is diametrically opposed to casual dressing. Asking Pedder if she sees these ideas as existing as a binary she explains, “I like to think of [casual couture] as a subculture of haute couture. It opens up a new avenue and space for ‘couture’ to evolve and extend its accessibility and availability beyond its traditional demographic and classifications.”

The integration of the everyday in luxury fashion is not a new concept; streetwear codes have been absorbed into the design thinking and sensibilities of almost every major fashion house producing ready-to-wear today. However, very few marry the casual wearability and visual language of these aesthetics with the laborious and traditional craft of couture. The deployment of denim, puffer jackets and white t-shirts on the haute couture runway at Balenciaga under Demna is one of the scarce examples where casual aesthetics collide with the meticulous techniques of couture. This same collision is integral to Pedder’s practice. Made-to-order and made-by-hand (the non-negotiable hallmarks of any couture practice) are the practical foundations upon which the designer’s vision is expressed.

The conceptual undercurrent of Pedder’s work is defined by a dichotomy between form and sentiment. That is, the emotion and feeling imbued into each piece. While the form instructs the garment, the sentiment informs how we respond to it. “There is a constant back and forth for me. Because of the technique I use, I am essentially a textile-driven designer, and the imprint of my own sentiment is a response to the textile.” Pedder’s practice embodies the freedom and relevance of contemporary aesthetics, all carried by a foundation of traditional craft.

Of course, devotion to such a way of working presents significant challenges. Even in the age of interconnectedness, Australia as a cultural landscape has always experienced an element of regional isolation, making it difficult to bridge the chasm between us and the rest of the world. When asked how geographical position factors into her work and its future, Pedder responds: “Instagram and remote work formats have been focal in enabling cross border connection and collaboration for my work. Thanks to these platforms and the exposure they provide, existing outside of these hubs does not feel like a detriment to myself or my work.” The exposure afforded through social media led to a standout career moment for Pedder, when Jennie Kim of BLACKPINK wore one of her dresses during the band’s 2023 Australian tour, ultimately bringing her designs to new and engaged audiences at a global level. 

Another significant factor in Pedder’s practice, one that presents both challenge and opportunity, is the urgency to work with methods that curtail the impact of climate change and waste. In Pedder’s work, this is made manifest through three acts: a dedication to small scale production; a reclamation of deadstock silks; and through the designer’s unwavering devotion to making each garment by her own hand onshore in Australia. 

Pedder studied at the University of Technology Sydney under the mentorship of Timo Rissanen, previously an assistant professor of fashion and sustainability at New York’s Parsons School of Design. “I was taught that our method and our approach to fashion design was untenable without sustainability built into the way we do things. [My professor] was trying to teach all of us that there simply was no other way of approaching fashion design today.”

This commitment to a slower, more sustainable output empowers smaller labels to embed sustainable production early in their house codes. While large fashion houses are furnished with the resources to invest in sustainability through material innovations or technological advancements, their position on the industry/craft binary and the volume of their output ultimately prohibits true environmental stewardship. “It is the responsibility of emerging designers to push the importance of sustainability. Being sustainable does limit you to a very small and niche practice, but I believe that’s opening up spaces for lots of different brands to evolve,” says Pedder. “I’m constantly thinking about sustainability. That’s why I am such a small artist, but I’m very happy with my niche.” 

While sticking to her corner of the industry may present limitations, this limitation can also be seen as an invitation to innovate—an invitation Pedder is very ready to accept. The fashion industry’s unrelenting pressure for growth would compromise the time that Pedder would need to watch things develop slowly. Indeed, one of the most noted points made in John Galliano’s 2024 artisanal collection for Maison Margiela was that the designer had taken his time. Galliano’s collection served as a healthy reminder of something that a ravenous fashion industry seems to have forgotten: thoughtful, beautiful, detailed work takes time to gestate, to find the resonance in its voice and its place in the archive of our collective cultural consciousness. Ruby Pedder, too, is taking her time. The casual couture designer has built a foundation of integrity, sensitivity and skill. What grows from here promises to be exceptional.