I met fashion business partners Adriana Cachay and Laerke Skyum in the spring of 2015; Adriana in New York and later with Laerke in Lima, Peru. After researching Danish-inspired fashion online, I stumbled across their profile and fashion line, Ayni, and reached out to them to find out more about their businesses. Initially impressed with their interesting Peruvian-Danish business partnership, and subsequently their inspired friendship that blossomed into successful business ventures, meeting them confirmed the alignment of their vision and place within the current direction of fashion and its empowerment movement. In fact, the word Ayni, in an Inca tradition, represents the force of reciprocity- today for you, tomorrow for me.
Ayni fashion line is a culmination of the Danish aesthetic, Peruvian ethically-sourced Alpaca fabric and sustainable design, produced by two inspired and empowered women. Ayni is what the fashion and apparel world has been waiting for, and there is no reason why Ayni should not be on the minds of every fashionista in 2018 and forward.
Launched in 2009, Ayni was doing Hygge before the rest of the world outside of Scandinavia knew how to pronounce it correctly, and were nonchalantly female empowerment before the fashion crowd were rocking “We Should all be Feminists” t-shirts. Ayni was authentically born of the future and only needs to remain authentic to its initial vision to widen its success in the global market. The ingredients are there to sa
tiate the appetites of the fashion market, it will be a matter of execution.
Danish fashion design has found its moment, if not its place, in the fashion arena as women are embracing the self-assured and understated-femininity, and translated through oversized silhouettes. But the times have called for something deeper than the eye can process, we have fallen in love with facets of the Danish woman’s experience. Danish women live in a country where the gender inequality is more narrowed and less detrimental to women’s well-being than much of the developed world- expressed in their confidently comfortable, yet elevated, style. And the fashion world wants a piece of it, one ensemble at a time.
The partnership that has created Ayni allows for the Danish aesthetic experience and a Peruvian vision toward ethical and sustainable fabric sourcing and design. The hero fabric for Ayni is the high-quality Alpaca, all sourced from Peru. The designs and subtle, yet glamorously-detailed, collections are unmistakably Danish, while the spirit remains seamlessly Peruvian. It is a hard proposition to pull off but no doubt can be done, when it’s led by authenticity as Ayni has managed to do.