Fashion is an infinite feedback loop – with materials informing garment structure, to said composition informing the wearer, and the wearer defining the world of fashion, it is hard to draw a clear line between where style begins and finishes. Offering their own perspective on this relationship is revolutionary designer Jules Bramley (they/them). Based in Naarm (Sydney), the Palestinian/Venezuelan designer found themselves invigorated by the fashion scene in the queer rave scene of London, promptly returning to Australia in order to pursue their education at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Fashion Design and garment composition.

A pioneer in the industry in more ways than one, Bramley’s approach to garment composition is refreshing and heartfelt. Deadstock and offcuts are given a new life, as their state of decay becomes a stylistic inspiration for cut-outs and silhouettes, speaking to the inevitability and impermanence of the garments we produce so carelessly. Bramley’s brand also refuses to gender their garments, pushing back against the cis and heteronormative power structures within the industry, and creating a space in which other trans and non-binary bodies feel comfortable and represented within their works. Bramley is simply doing what comes natural to them – rejecting notions of normativity, centering textiles as the core of their work, and drawing inspiration from our planet itself. To feel beautiful in your authentic form can be an incredibly rare thing, and Bramley’s designs are hand-made and carefully composed as an example of how healthy and beautiful this feedback loop has the potential to be. Through nourishing ourselves and our planet, standard design practices are able to unravel and fall apart.

Hey Jules! What’ve you been up to lately?

Hey! I’m developing a new collection right now, so I’ve been experimenting with some new textiles, mainly leather and faux fur. I’m very excited for winter here in Australia – wool is often only available seasonally, so it’s been hard to source deadstock/offcuts for my work.

I’m so excited to see them featured in your pieces! Also already wishing you a successful wool-haul. I’m literally obsessed with all of your pieces – from the natural earth tones to the asymmetrical silhouettes, to the emphasis on decay and the disintegration of beauty. There are several brands who take a sustainable, slow-fashion approach to their production process, but it’s so rare to find a brand that centers its aesthetic around the issue. What is it about the intersection between fashion and biopolitics that led to you taking such a beautiful and narrative approach to your designs?

Thank you! It's honestly quite hard for me to think about my business with a capitalist mindset – to think of the clothes before the issue. A lot of ‘sustainable and ethical brands’ are literally just copying trending clothes off AliExpress for hundreds of dollars to create something ‘marketable and sellable’. That’s not what fashion is to me.

My first collection was inspired by a tub of wool offcuts in a remnant fabric store near my house that was priced by weight and going to waste soon. As I love wool, I purchased all the offcuts to see if I could produce a capsule collection out of them. Lots of these woolen pieces were already decayed and had holes and rips through them, so I started to drape the wool on a form and embrace the decayed nature of these pieces by decaying them further and felting them together to create zero waste garments. I guess the textile (wool) is what forms my approach to design, and that is represented in my next collection too.

Wool is such an extraordinary fiber, it can be boiled and fulled to create an extremely durable, sustainable, and insulating fabric. Scrap pieces can be felted together to create larger pieces of fabric, so you can really create anything without much waste. It can also easily be repurposed through felting – it’s odor and stain resistant, making the garment life cycle way more sustainable during the wearing stage (as you don’t have to wash wool as it’s hard to get dirty). It really is an incredible and versatile textile.

I love that! The way that the materials themselves are in conversation with the designs you’re creating adds an entirely new dimension to every garment. Another key element of your pieces is their complete lack of gendering, unlocking an entirely new potential for styling and centering the human as an entity in relation to the Earth, rather than a coded figure. I feel that society has taken a step away from enforcing this binary when it comes to celebrities wearing different pieces, but brands themselves rarely so explicitly take this approach. How do you hope alleviating these gendered codes from your pieces will help you form a community around your brand? And then as an extension of that, have there been any commissions or orders you’ve received that stuck with you?

One of the biggest priorities for my brand is to celebrate queer, and trans individuals. I myself identify as trans, and I wish I had more people in the fashion industry to look up to that celebrate queerness – that are creating clothes not just for the cis body, but for all bodies, and the trans body.

Some of my dresses don’t have breast room because not everyone has breasts that want to wear dresses, and that goes for any garment. These classic archetypes of a men’s shirt, or women’s blouse, make me and a lot of other trans or gender non-conforming individuals feel unrepresented, and I completely reject these hetero normative constructs in fashion.

I’ve formed an incredible community here in Naarm (Melbourne) and I’m very inspired by the queer and trans people around me. I’ve been able to make some incredible custom pieces for people in my community and that means the most to me. If my pieces are too unconventional or non-marketable to the predominantly cis, hetero community I couldn’t care less.

As you shouldn’t – at the end of the day, fashion should be a way of decorating your body and expressing yourself, and everybody should be able to do that without feeling like their clothing isn’t ‘made for them’. I really love this aspect of your band, as well as how you got into fashion in the first place! I definitely relate to the sentiment that motivated you to move to London, and kind of the process of finding a sense of belonging. How do you feel your time there nourished and equipped you to return back to Australia and start studying garment construction? Do you think your experiences influenced the kinds of silhouettes and materials you use in your designs?

I arrived back to Australia from London feeling extremely motivated to get into fashion. London is a complete contrast to Sydney – everyone is so ambitious and independent in London, working so hard, pushing themselves creatively, whereas there is a very relaxed atmosphere in Australia. People take things very slow here, but that’s not how my brain works, and living in London really pushed me to think bigger.

Although Australia is the biggest wool exporter in the world, it’s way more influenced by fashion overseas due to the climate, and I definitely noticed that. I guess my garments and material choices are inspired by me realizing my love for fashion in these countries, and being inspired by the alpine-like atmosphere and the influence of climate in fashion.

Especially coming from slower environments, it can be so invigorating to have a bustling city imbue this sense of urgency within you. I find that just as gorgeous as the pieces themselves is the presentation of them whether it was your first capsule collection shot by @publictoylet, 3D rendered versions of the 3-strap dune dresses, or being styled alongside Ottolinger, there’s just something so elevated and exciting about the perspective and energy your designs carry. How would you best describe the universe your pieces live in, and how do both the medium of photography and digital rendering lend themselves to your overarching vision?

I really appreciate that, thank you. I think building the world in which the garments live is really important. Whether this be celebrating queer and trans bodies, or highlighting a dark and grimy atmosphere that some people might find solitude in, it’s all to highlight the concept and story behind the collection and the garments. It’s really exciting to explore these physical and digital realms to create a fully immersive concept and immersive experience. SJ (@publictoylet) is a collaborator of mine; every shoot I do, I reach out to SJ. We both share aesthetic desires, we love exploring – either in drains or abandoned sites. It’s really exciting for us to be able to build this world together and combine both aspects of fashion, photography, and set design all in one. I use digital software and avatars to help experiment and create patterns without fabric waste, to come up with solutions to make use of scrap fabric to cover all bodies, grade patterns, and make use of the amazing technology we have access to. I’m trying to build a website that just has an avatar you can build and customize one of my garments on, to choose which parts you want decayed – to be able to create your fantasy, and then it be made to order.

Whether it’s a real life shoot or a digitally rendered shoot, the atmosphere and references are always very important for me, and usually inspire the entire collection from the get-go.

It’s also so amazing to have someone that you can so closely work with who completely gets your vision – also, I feel like that website would be a total game changer when it comes to custom pieces, and would really cultivate the collaborative energy inherently within your brand. I’ve already mentioned the natural earth tones of your pieces, but I also love the different names you associate with different organic materials and how they feed into your designs. The cut-outs in the Magma pieces remind me of burn holes, whereas those in the Moss designs feel like natural growth. How do you approach designing new pieces from a creative standpoint? Do these earthly elements inform the design from its inception, or does the piece itself inspire these ecological references?

Thank you for noticing that. As soon as I discovered the beautiful deep effect of dyeing and airbrushing the wool, as I experimented more, they all started to look like parts of our environment. I wanted to explore the darkest parts of the earth’s natural elements – like the deep sea, magma, moss, dunes etc. – and really maintain an organic colour scheme using organic material. The ‘strapless magma dress’ is probably my favourite piece, as it really does look like flesh or magma in real life.

I really hope to be able to see your pieces one day in person! I’m truly so inspired by your brand and I’m so excited to see your collection expand and grow. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions! As one final inquiry, I actually wanted to know how designing clothing has influenced your own personal sense of style! Do you feel that one informs the other, or do you see them as two separate realms in your life?

They coincide, but they are separate for me. I have involved myself in a couple photoshoots of mine, but mainly because the ethics of having a model deep inside an underground drain is not ideal as it’s dangerous, and unhygienic. But when I look at these pictures of myself, I don’t really see myself – it’s like an AI version of myself. I do love to dress up, and I often trial pieces on a night out to see how comfortable they are, and how they work layered with other pieces – but my sense of style is definitely centered around dressing a trans body, feeling comfortable, sexy and unapologetically myself.