By the end of 2025, House Ade did not feel right anymore.
The brand already existed. I had made collections, taken photos, built the website and spent so much time trying to work out what it was. But I had reached a point where carrying on in the same way felt worse than stopping.
A lot of the work no longer felt like me.
Some things I still cared about and I did not want to lose that.
But Ade had also become too broad. There were too many ideas and not enough connecting them. I was making clothes, trying different directions and sometimes making things because I thought that was what a fashion brand should be doing.
I could keep producing more, but I did not know what I was actually building towards.
Around the same time, I moved from London to Limassol.
That changed more than I expected.
I had studied fashion in London and most of my understanding of clothes, brands and personal style came from being there. Then suddenly I was living somewhere with different weather, different people, different access to materials and a completely different creative scene.
I did not want to turn House Ade into a Mediterranean brand just because I had moved to Cyprus. But pretending nothing had changed also made no sense.
So I stopped trying to push the old version of the brand forward.
I started looking at what I actually kept coming back to.
Soft shapes. Pleats. Folds. Things being pulled, compressed or adjusted. Small details that change the whole object.
I also became more interested in accessories.
Not because I had decided Ade needed to become an accessories brand, but because the bags started to feel closer to what I had been trying to make all along.
They could be strange without being unwearable. They could change an outfit without taking it over. They gave me more room to focus on shape, construction and the small details I naturally care about.
The rebuild was not one big decision.
It was mostly making things, changing my mind and slowly becoming more honest about what I liked and what I did not.
Some old ideas stayed. A lot did not.
I became less interested in making lots of different things and more interested in making Ade feel specific.
That is still happening now.
I do not think there was a clear point where the old Ade ended and the new one started.
I just stopped trying to continue for the sake of continuing and started rebuilding from the parts that still felt worth keeping.
