Award-winning fashion label to exit Ebenezer
A tailored urban wear brand is closing its flagship Ebenezer Place store, with a funky exhibition marking the end of an era. But the founder promises it won’t be gone for long. Find out her plans.
Rachel Van Brussel’s namesake label’s Ebenezer Place shop will close at the end of the month, after a year in the prime East End location.
It comes as Rundle Street consignment store Goodbye’s announced its Adelaide closure today, and after Leonard St exited Ebenezer Place.
Founder and designer Rachel Van Brussel said it had been a “beautiful year” and she was ready for the label to start its next chapter, which would involve popping up in major international locations like London’s Shoreditch in May.
She will also continue to trade online, and her next collection is expected to launch in June.
“It’s not a sad ending because I have plans for growth, and I’m excited about opening a new Adelaide store in the coming months,” Rachel says.
Melbourne shoppers will also get a taste of the Adelaide-born label in a David Jones’ display window at Melbourne’s Bourke Street Mall – after Rachel won the coveted retailer’s spot when she took home the country’s most prestigious fashion award at the end of February.
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Rachel won the Melbourne Fashion Festival’s National Designer Award for Sustainability, which secured her a runway in next year’s Melbourne Fashion Week, a cash prize, the David Jones collaboration and a mentorship with David Jones and fabric marketplace Circular Sourcing.
She said winning was “incredibly validating – not just personally, but for everything VAN BRUSSEL stands for”.
Australian manufacturing and sustainability is a core value of the brand, whose manufacturers include a boutique team of women machinists in Holden Hill, a Campbelltown husband and wife duo looking after tailoring, suiting and jackets and a hand-crocheted maker in Goodwood.
Rachel said the award “marked a point where our values were not only recognised, but affirmed on both a national and international stage”.
“It was especially reinforcing to see that as the industry shifts toward more conscious consumption, onshore production, and long-lasting design, there is a growing appetite for fashion that is thoughtful, transparent, and made to endure,” she says.
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Rachel says the Van Brussel customer is conscious of the strain the fashion industry puts on the environment and is willing to invest in the clothes.
Before Van Brussel farewells the Ebenezer store on March 29, the label is involved in an exhibition at the nearby Flinders Street gallery, FutureJuice.
The exhibition, called RE:WORK, showcases wearable art from local designers Isaac Awramenko, Cadell Canute, Esmé and JaneJu.
The designers reimagined existing Van Brussel garments in a project that the visual art organisers behind Futurejuice says reframed the idea of “reuse” into something fit for a luxury, contemporary fashion house.
Rachel opened Van Brussel in March last year, saying it was special because, as an Adelaide local, she had fond memories of the area.
“I spent a lot of time on Ebenezer place when I was growing up and when I was in uni, coming down here for a little drink, or just to see the other little boutiques that were along here and I always loved this kind of elevated, really sleek, manicured feel,” she says.
Van Brussel is located at 18 Ebenezer Place, Adelaide and is open every day until it closes on March 29.
RE:WORK, a collaboration with Van Brussel and FutureJuice is showing at 248 Flinders Street until March 22, with an auction and closing party on Friday, March 20.
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