Ms Sofia Prantera, the founder of Aries, on the street smarts of Plato.

Over the past decade, streetwear has sauntered its way to the zenith of fashion – we now exist in an era where a skate brand collaborating with a luxury fashion house is de rigueur, and fashion’s cool cache now belongs to the streetwear designers. That’s why Messrs Virgil Abloh and Demna Gvasalia hold some of the top positions in fashion as designers at Louis Vuitton menswear and Balenciaga respectively, and why a cult sneaker drop can create more interest among millennials than a local election.

In this age of hype, though, streetwear brands need something more than just natty clothes, and that’s where London- based Aries comes in. A streetwise label known for its unisex designs and nods towards ancient Greece (a Parthenon appears throughout the brand’s latest collection), Aries is one of the more interesting brands to ride streetwear’s wave of popularity, and sits in that rare sartorial space somewhere between the mainstream and esoteric. After focusing primarily on womenswear – but becoming a hit with men nonetheless – Aries launched its first men’s collection with MR PORTER at the beginning of 2018.

Originally attracted to the punkish energy of fringe fashion publications such as The Face, and extreme designers like Mr Leigh Bowery and Mr Christopher Nemeth, the brand’s founder Ms Sofia Prantera realised that a lot of the sensibility of the 1980s was about the clothes on the street rather than the runway. “Whether we like it or not, [ fashion ] influences the way we live our everyday lives,” Ms Prantera writes in Aries’ brand book. “And this made me feel even more strongly about making the essence of Aries so undefinable.”

Call it reverse psychology, but the brand’s definition-defying sensibility just makes us more curious, so we spoke to Ms Prantera about how Aries began, if the term “streetwear” has become meaningless, and what the perfect pair of jeans have to do with Plato.