Claire Greaves, co-founder of active streetwear brand P.E Nation has made the decision to step back from the day-to-day running of the company.
Ten years ago, Greaves founded the company with her friend, Pip Edwards after working together at Australian label Sass & Bride. The pair had an aim to disrupt the activewear market by realising their own vision of active streetwear, which leant heavily into 1980s style.
According to a statement from P.E Nation, Greaves will remain on the board of the company and retain her shareholding.
Prior to P.E Nation’s launch, Greaves began her fashion career at TopShop in London. Two years later, she founded her own label called Maise, and this led to her being appointed as senior designer at Sass & Bride as a denim and knitwear specialist. Then, in 2016, P.E Nation was born.
The announcement of Greaves’s departure came just days after the brand staged the Grand Showcase at the Melbourne Fashion Festiva l– the biggest runway of its eight-year history – and achieved a world-recognised sustainability benchmark.
Greaves wasn’t present at the six-night runway program and didn’t appear in any of the promotional material.
On Thursday, Edwards posted on her personal Instagram about P.E Nation achieved B Corp status, a global benchmark for sustainability, saying it had “been a full business, all staff, enormous initiative over the past 2 years”.
Edwards plans to take the reins of the company, alongside the other board of directors.
“The business has secured and developed an extremely strong product and design team,” the P.E Nation statement read. “Pip and the company are in complete support of Claire’s transition to pursue other creative endeavours and wish her the absolute best in her next chapter.”