Blue jean baby

A seminal William St store has lasted the distance

When Nudie Jeans opened on William St 20 years ago, the range of items offered in-store was rather more limited than it is today.

“I think we had just 12 categories when we opened,” laughs founder and owner Bryce Alton. “It was a little bare, a bit more like a showroom.”

For the then 22-year-old, the opening would be the start of a two-decade ride with denim, selling Australians — successfully, as it turns out — on the idea of cool, organic Swedish jeans. The Paddington store was the first standalone Nudie outlet in the world; there are now 35 worldwide, from Berlin to Osaka to Brooklyn, eight of which are owned by Alton.

“When we started, we didn’t have kids, it was just us — me, my brother and his fiancé — and we paid ourselves $450 a week,” Alton recalls. “But we were happy because we were building something and we saw there was this major opportunity.”

The store opened not with a bang but with a slow build, with the brand growing in awareness year by year.

“It wasn’t this crazy high of sales to start,” Alton says. “It was just constant. It just continued to build.”

The brand has become one of the world’s most sustainable denim labels, with an ethos of circular fashion that includes recycling old Nudie denim, using only organic and ethically grown cotton and offering lifetime repairs on jeans. Alton says that in a world of fast fashion, Nudie is embracing a slow-down philosophy, and he eventually wants to move to an entirely recycled model.

“We have changed expectations in the market, especially around organic cotton,” he says. “It’s a given now.”

Alton says the Paddington outlet remains a cherished cornerstone of the retail empire, even as sales at the store have waxed and waned over the years. He says the store once came close to closing, but he found he was too emotionally tied to it to shut the doors — and he’s glad he didn’t.

“In January 2020, the store wasn’t doing that great and I thought, ‘This could be the first store we have to close’,” Alton says. “But I was driving up Underwood St one night and I thought, ‘I owe it to Paddington to keep this store going’. I was giving back to the community.

“It was that decision that saved it. And then after COVID, people didn’t want to go to the mall any more and by October-November 2021, Paddington was one of the best performing stores in the country.”

This year, Alton plans a celebration for the store where it all began. “We’ll invite the locals,” he says. “It will be fun.”

Nudie Jeans Co.

35 William St Paddington

nudiejeans.com