SYDNEY — WeWearAustralian is putting down roots Stateside.
Cofounded in early 2020 by West Australian entrepreneurs Richard Poulson and Kelly Atkinson as an industry solidarity initiative to help Australian fashion labels move canceled orders at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, and later evolving into an ongoing awareness campaign and e-commerce concept, WeWearAustralian’s first permanent brick-and-mortar store is due to open at 69 Mercer Street in SoHo on Saturday.
Showcasing a rotation of residencies of up to 35 Australian brands at a time, mostly fashion but also art and interiors, the 5,000-square-foot store is the first of four U.S. WeWearAustralian boutiques the husband-and-wife duo plan to open over the next five years. An Upper East Side location is due to open in 2027, later followed by stores in Palm Beach and Dallas.
Helen Kaminski hats, Bared Footwear shoes and Yaneth sweater at the WeWearAustralian SoHo boutique.
Philip Tran
All sales are on a consignment basis, with Poulson and Atkinson taking a subscription fee from participants. Brands can gain real-time intelligence on in-store performance via a partnership with Flagship, a Sydney-based, AI-powered digital visual merchandising platform.
The brand curation for each store will vary per location. For SoHo, it’s a contemporary $300 to $1,200 price range, with brands at launch including Akubra, Bondi Born, Bared Footwear, Esse Studios, Hansen & Gretel, Lee Mathews, Silk Laundry, Ilio Nema and Viktoria & Woods. Featured artists include Nina Fitzgerald, Tom Butterworth and Henryk, with furniture and homewares from McMullan and Co., Jardan and Antico.
Two Melbourne-based creatives were tasked with the SoHo store’s design. Erin Lambrecht designed the interiors, with Suzie Stanford custom-making a pair of whimsical brass front door handles which feature Australian fauna such as kangaroos, koalas, lizards and moths.
Helen Kaminski bag and hats, Bared Footwear shoes and Yaneth sweaters at the WeWearAustralian SoHo boutique.
Philip Tran
Also going live on Saturday is WeWearAustralian.com, a dedicated U.S. e-commerce platform selling a wider selection of Australian brands year-round, which replaces the duo’s previous Showroom-X website. WeWearAustralian.com.au will remain visible in Australia, as a non-shoppable information platform.
The company will cover off local logistics, duties, tariffs and fulfillment via a third party facility in Austin, with additional support on offer to any Australian brands hoping to scale in the U.S. after their residencies.
“It’s plug-and-play — a turnkey solution,” said Poulson, the cofounder of the West Australian vertical fashion chain Morrison, who has relocated to New York with Atkinson and their young daughter to oversee the business.
“We’re an incubator,” he added. “They can test the market here at a low cost. If they want to grow and do their own pop-up store, we can handle that for them. We’ve got some brands that want to roll out retail after testing, we can do that as well.”
Henryk painting, Fomu Studio tables and lamp, Objects of Virtue vase and Bared Footwear at the WeWearAustralian SoHo boutique.
Philip Tran
WeWearAustralian joins a growing cohort of Australian fashion boutiques in the U.S., including Zimmermann, Scanlan Theodore, Camilla, R.M. Williams, Ksubi, Princess Polly and Tony Bianco. That’s not counting a proliferation of Australian cafés, bars and pubs across the country. The Bluestone Lane coffee chain — whose founder Nick Stone is a WeWearAustralian investor — now operates over 55 U.S. locations, including 15 in New York City.
Since launch WeWearAustralian has supported more than 350 brands, generating over 20 million social media impressions over 2020-2021 alone and millions of Australian dollars in sales for the brands, according to Poulson and Atkinson. In May 2023, Australian Fashion Week closed with a see-now-buy-now WeWearAustralian runway show featuring 88 brands.
Exterior shot of the new WeWearAustralian boutique at 69 Mercer Street, SoHo.
Philip Tran
The 2026 move into physical retail follows two three-day New York pop-ups in February and September 2025. The first, in partnership with Joor and Australia Post, generated nearly 1 million Australian dollars in combined retail and wholesale revenue across the six days, or $650,000 at average exchange for the period. Over the same time, U.S. traffic to the website rose 149 percent year-over-year.
“That kind of started the conversation,” said Atkinson, WeWearAustralian creative director. “We were like, ‘OK, maybe this works over here. Maybe this is real’. The Americans were just so in love with the Australian brands.”
