Inside Aries x Bershka’s Eden Collaboration – Cranach Woodcuts, Ed Templeton and the End of Innocence

April 17, 2026
Fashion & Beauty
Photography:
Ed Templeton
Words:
Gemma Lacey

When Aries founder Sofia Prantera collaborated with Bershka on “Εδεν” — Eden — the brief was never simply to make clothes. The resulting collection is a meditation on lost innocence, the seduction of consumption and the precise moment childhood ends. Shot by skateboarding legend and photographer Ed Templeton, styled by Euphoria’s Heidi Bivens and rooted in 15th-century Cranach woodcuts, it’s a collaboration that has no business being this culturally ambitious — and yet here we are. We sat down with Prantera to talk paradise, Pasolini and why you absolutely should not seek enlightenment through your next purchase.

Gemma Lacey: You’re someone who always seems to make your own rules in the fashion space –bold choices, your own logic. Is that hard to sustain? Where does the confidence come from?
Sofia Prantera: Time and experience have given me the freedom to make bolder choices and dare more. And I think that confidence is contagious – it’s also given others the confidence to let me experiment.
GL: What worlds inspire you? Aries overlaps a lot with skate culture, but what else feeds into the work?
SP: Everything, really – people, culture, subculture, trash, books, films, art, social media. I’m like a magpie. It’s possibly the best and worst thing about me. I find it very hard to edit anything out, and I try to incorporate every reference into the work, which can honestly be a hindrance as much as a strength.
GL: Your work with Silas was so defining. Is Aries a successor to that, or a separate entity entirely?
SP: I’ve always seen my life and work as one continuous path. But Silas was different – I was working with other people, and they shaped what I was producing too. When I started Aries, I was very conscious of wanting to create something less defined, something that would allow me to experiment more freely. By the end of the Silas years, the coherence of the output had started to feel quite suffocating.
GL: The collection explores a “fictional paradise” that ultimately exposes the contradictions of consumerism. That’s a bold critique to embed into a retail collaboration. How did you navigate that tension – and was Bershka immediately on board?
SP: Everyone at Bershka was surprisingly easy to work with, and genuinely open to risk-taking. They have a very young customer and very few rules. They’re also interested in building a cultural environment around the brand, and they’re comfortable being subversive.
I think we’re all aware, to some extent, of the contradictions in our consumer-focused world — but that awareness doesn’t stop us wanting more, or wanting better. We’re all trying to find enlightenment through consumption or self-reinvention, which is both sad and quite comical. White Lotus was a major reference point here. Humans are fragile, and it’s healthy not to take things too seriously.
GL: The title “Εδεν” – Eden in Greek – carries a lot of weight. What drew you to that reference, and how does the Aries lens reframe what paradise actually means?
SP: Eden refers to a world before knowledge – specifically, the shift from childhood to adolescence; that first moment of becoming truly awake, and the loss of innocence that comes with it. Social media can represent that shift perfectly: the moment you realise you are seen by others, and that you are not your own entire world. It’s a poignant threshold – the moment you understand you’re a grown-up.
We didn’t set out to reframe Eden so much as to point towards it. There’s a real nostalgia in the images we created, because it is such a magical and irretrievable moment. I’d been watching Pasolini’s Comizi d’amore, in which he also speaks about the sacred, and its erosion through consumerism. The dialogues in our moving image were unscripted, inspired directly by his interview style.
GL: The collection blends what feel like opposing codes – preppy, grunge, playful, edgy. Was there a moment where those worlds finally clicked?
SP: Using the apple as a brand motif was probably that moment. Though my personal favourites are the dresses – cute, but intense.
GL: Hand-drawn graphics feel like such a deliberate, labour-intensive choice in an era of digital-first design. What role do they play in communicating the collection’s emotional core?
SP: The all-over drawings are actually original Cranach woodcuts from the late 15th century. We’d been using them as references, but the Bershka team was happy to license them properly — and they’re extraordinary.
GL: Ed Templeton is an iconic choice for the campaign. What did his presence bring that a more conventional fashion photographer couldn’t?
SP: From the start, we all felt this collection shouldn’t read as fashion – it should feel like a real portrait of youth. Nicki and I had wanted to work with Ed for a while and were looking for the right project. This was it. His and Deanna’s work on youth culture is incredible, and we knew we could create something genuinely special together. Ed’s images also draw heavily on religious iconography, so the alignment felt natural.
The Aries x Bershka Εδεν collection is available from 24th April 2026 exclusively at Bershka.com. Shot on location in Huntington Beach, California by multidisciplinary artist and skate culture icon Ed Templeton, and styled by Euphoria‘s Heidi Bivens, the campaign is as carefully considered as the clothes themselves. Menswear spans jacquard denim, mandala-print fleece and lo-fi graphic knits; womenswear balances grunge and femininity through printed dresses, distressed denim and embellished pieces – all unified by hand-drawn graphics and artistic references that trace a line from 15th-century Cranach woodcuts to the sun-bleached sprawl of Southern California. A fictional paradise, then – contradictions and all.
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