Join us in celebrating two decades of ELK as we welcome a new season and express our thanks for your support over the past incredible 20 years.

Journey with us as we revisit our most memorable milestones and reimagine iconic designs from the archives through a conscious fashion lens.
Throughout the season, we look forward to sharing our story as we rediscover the past, celebrate the present, and step into a more sustainable future together.

In 2004, Adam and I launched the ELK brand, starting with handcrafted jewellery and embarking on our journey as life and business partners.
We started as a team of two making everything ourselves. We grew slowly and steadily and had enormous fun with total creative freedom and the wide-eyed enthusiasm of two young creatives.

From the beginning, we were passionate about working with ethical makers, making a conscious decision to only work with like-minded people who shared our values.

We promised each other, where possible, to only work with makers we could visit and would allow us access to their workshops or businesses.
Once we started to travel, we learned so much. We saw how to scale production beyond our workshop, discovered new techniques and Adam applied his technical skills to help makers with their production. With some suppliers, we grew together; others were experienced and taught us a lot.

Travelling to see our factories was a life-changing time for us. We met some of the most incredible people and their families. In 2009, we created our first apparel collection. In 2012, prints were launched, quickly becoming what is now a signature aesthetic of our design ethos.

The collections grew to encompass denim, leather, and linen, all of which are still present in our current ranges. Each exciting milestone in our growth has marked significant achievements in our journey, while also increasing our awareness of the environmental impact we have as a business.

In 2019, we launched our first annual Transparency Report, a document detailing how ELK operates as a fashion business. It serves as a public statement of our commitment to running a business with transparency, honesty, and integrity, tracking our progress towards our 2025 goals.

We wanted to publicly share our journey of change. We had been working hard to shift our thinking, change our processes and reduce our footprint. The Transparency Report does this for us and will continue to serve this purpose into the future by detailing our work and holding us accountable to our commitments and claims. View Our Transparency Report.

In recognition of our focus on conscious fashion, we were awarded the 2019 Australian Fashion Laureate for Sustainable Innovation, one of many awards we are proud to have achieved over the last decade.

Following the publication of our first Transparency Report, we defined ourselves as more than just a fashion brand. Our brand and business have become an example for a new way of thinking.

The desire for positive change in our industry and with consumers has gained great momentum. We continue to shift our goals, thinking and practices - we cannot set and forget. Our mission continually evolves as we learn more and gain access to new and innovative solutions and materials.

Our commitment to sustainability is holistic. Since May 2021, our ELK business operations have been powered by 100% renewable electricity, with on-site solar covering 47% of our needs and the remainder sourced from 100% GreenPower.

At ELK HQ, we integrate a beehive, worm farms, and a stormwater tank and utilise a custom-built, energy-efficient HVAC heating and cooling system. Amongst many sustainable initiatives, our team at the Distribution Centre separates waste into ten different streams to ensure it can be recycled by specialised recyclers.

Our retail footprint extends to eight stores, with the most recent addition in Barwon Heads, located in the beautiful Victorian coastal area of the Bellarine Peninsula, the place, along with our two children, we call home.

In the next six months, we will open two more stores in Victoria: one in Newtown, Geelong, and the other in Mornington.

There is much to come for ELK. Our focus is on business growth, the expansion of our knowledge and commitments to reducing our footprint and to continuing our legacy as an iconic Australian fashion brand.

Our key areas of environmental focus are achieving Net Zero carbon emissions, obtaining BCorp certification, and expanding our already successful circularity program, ReNEW.

We are taking responsibility for our role in creating a circular economy by offering end-of-life solutions for our products to reduce textile waste through our ReNEW program.

We are also proud members of Seamless and are committed to finding ways as a business and industry to reduce our impact.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to our valued wholesalers, suppliers, our families, team, and the whole ELK community both here and overseas for championing conscious fashion alongside us. Your support not only sustains our family business but inspires continual innovation and progress.

You have been an integral part of our proud, 20-year journey, and we look forward to you being a part of our future.

Marnie, Adam, and The ELK Team