London Fashion Week can sometimes seem an alien concept, our national sensibilities tickled by the stream of social media depicting frozen, peacocking fashionistas attempting to upstage the splendour of Somerset House. However, beyond the gaggles trying to catch the eye of The Sartorialist are important trade shows, formative presentations, and an international showcase that the serious fashion insiders comb through, looking for fresh talent to bookmark.
Connecting in a meaningful way with design communities beyond our own shores is a task that Irish Design 2015 has embarked upon with verve. In The Fold was the Irish exhibition at the British Fashion Council’s international showcase in Brewer Street Car Park in Soho. This exhibition, devised by Gemma A. Williams, an Irish fashion curator based in London, and Aisling Farinella, advisor on fashion and textiles for ID2015, was a bold statement on behalf of the Irish design community. I questioned Aisling about the significance of showing our most promising young designers in London, ‘Fashion is a global business, and no designer is going to be able to create, sustain and grow a brand in Ireland. They have to look outside. That’s not to say they can’t be based here, or that they can’t begin their business here, but in order to be successful and to have longevity they need to think outside of the island of Ireland, and they need to position themselves on the international stage. Each of the fashion cities have function within the fashion world, and London is very much about emerging talent, and that is where you get noticed as an emerging designer.’
Each exhibitor is given a space to display these emerging designers, so Gemma and Aisling worked with Dublin architects abgc in order to create a structure that didn’t just house the clothes, but invited the viewer into a small space, in order to encounter the designs in a strangely intimate way. Gearóid Carvill of abgc tells me, ‘The initial concept was about making an enclosure, because when you’ve got a lot of things going on you really want to control the noise and provide a white canvas for the clothes. You do want it to be visually engaging though, so we lifted the skirt up a little bit, so you could see the legs and the people moving through it or past it. We had a route, a narrative, an enclosure, a bit of voyeurism, and then we finished it all off with landscape. That’s when we put the chippings down, the slate down – so we were feeling properly Irish at that stage. That was the layering of it. When somebody is in this 150 square metre car park, and you’ve got a smaller space within it, when somebody steps over the threshold they’ve got to know that they’ve arrived somewhere different.’
Within, the work of exciting young designers popped. Laura Kinsella’s geometric millinery, the celestial moss glittering on Michael Stewart’s delicate white garment, and the intricacies of Olivia Doherty’s woven piece all sprang forth against the back-drop. The design of abgc’s setting allowed for each piece to have equal billing, ‘Our structure was basically a nest of tables, which allowed for each piece to find a home, with equal gravitas and its own setting.’ Carvill says that it was important to know where the brief ended, and allow the young designers’ work to shine. ‘It’s cool to be trusted to design an exhibit that will represent the youthful talent. I’m not the youthful talent, these eight guys are the talent, but I’m not going to mess up the way they’re presented to an international audience.’
In Ireland, while we have cradled young talent, we’ve been quick to watch it defect to new shores and big brands in London, New York, Paris and Milan. In no way is that a sob story – for most fashion graduates, that is the reality of the job. Very few end up at the helm of an international fashion house, and even fewer end up as the very successful proprietor of their own eponymous fashion house. While programmes by the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland, with mentoring from designers such as Joanne Hynes, have their hearts in the right place, for young designers, the buyers and industry professionals who will make or break their careers are not on this island. We should be regularly reaching out to London, where the British Fashion Council offers support and showcase space for countries who perhaps do not have their own sustainable fashion industries, and to Paris, which is where the buyers buy.
In the Fold was definitely a formative experience for the designers featured, Caoimhe MacNeice tells me, ‘In The Fold was an amazing experience, to be able to be part of an exhibition that featured over 30 other countries was definitely an eye-opener, to see where you fit in as a designer on an international platform. The British Fashion Council organised a series of talks and panels for all the designers, with topics on everything from marketing to digital sales to writing a business plan. To be able to learn from industry experts and ask them questions on these really practical subjects was an absolutely invaluable experience.’
For Laura Kinsella, the opportunity to meet key industry folk was one of the standout benefits of her participation in In the Fold, ‘I was lucky enough to be there the day the judges came round, so I met all the judges. Not everyone did. I don’t know how else I would have ever met those people; Sarah Mower from US Vogue, Alex from On|Off, and the curator from the V&A took my card.’
I asked Laura about what support systems they felt were available to them in Ireland, and the answers were interesting. Kinsella says, ‘London has NewGen, Headonism, loads of support structures – fair enough, you have to get in and you have to be really good and they are very limited, but at the launch of ID2015 I met two lovely ladies from Belfast who had set up this really cool thing, this hub in Belfast [Unify], and I think Dublin needs something like it. They have one really big, old building where designers can come in and work in it, and they have sewing rooms and pattern rooms, and mentors for help and advice. Two of my friends set up labels and they had to pack them in and leave because they didn’t have any help whatsoever. It’s tough, because you don’t feel like you have any backing whatsoever. That’s why this initiative, ID2015, is so important and going to do amazing things. And as Aisling says, she hopes this isn’t just a year, and it continues.’
Aisling herself highlights the existing infrastructure, ‘There are some supports, like small business grants from local enterprise boards and from the Crafts Council, but there’s no centralised base and even in the existing structures, the people giving out the money don’t know about fashion and its potential, so it’s not synced properly.’ Farinella sees the creation of a centralised portal of information as a crucial resource for young designers, a place where they can equip themselves with information about the funds and help available to them, as well as factual information about the industry so that they can be well informed on the subject.
Ireland’s two most successful young designers, Simone Rocha and Danielle Romeril, have both been launched through NewGen. The NewGen programme has been one of the most crucial building blocks for young designers working out of Britain since its foundation in 1993 by the British Fashion Council. It has been sponsored by Topshop since 2001, and its alumni include such hallowed names as Gareth Pugh and Peter Pilotto, but equally, as un-Google-able names as Mulligan (S/S 1999) or cringe-inducing throwbacks such as Elvis Jesus & Co Couture (S/S 2000). As much as it is a patron of young designers, it isn’t without its Medici-like demands of excellence. Applicants in the first instance must not have been operating for more than three years, and in those three years must have demonstrated their commercial viability with a minimum of two proven stockists. The process is rigorous, with 15 judges from all aspects of the fashion industry advising on the worthiest recipients. The four seasons of sponsorship is hard fought for, and for many recipients, the one sustainable route into their chosen career. Fashion is not a cheap business.
However, just because there are more opportunities for young designers in the UK, it doesn’t mean that there’s a willing brain drain of young designers, and MacNeice feels staying in Dublin to work is a viable option: ‘I think more young designers are intent on staying in Ireland. I know I am anyways! There is a real enthusiasm in Ireland right now, an attitude of trying to get more of an Irish fashion industry going which is really encouraging. I’ve worked in London before and I loved it, but it is just so completely saturated with fashion graduates. Living and working in somewhere like Dublin, there is a lot more breathing space. It’s a small community so when someone new comes along, people get genuinely excited and want to help move you in the right direction. I think the main thing that has shocked me since I entered the Irish fashion industry is how generous people are here with their time and knowledge.’
In terms of job availability in Ireland, it is tough to get involved in the domestic fashion industry. When Kinsella returned from Melbourne, where she designed ladies fashion, there were very few options for her. ‘I was looking around every day thinking, “I’m not going to get anything here, I’m going to have to go to London to work.” Literally in the same week, two apprenticeships came up – like JobBridge, but before that was around – and one came up for a knitwear designer in Cork, and the other was a milliner in Dublin. I love knitwear, so I was really torn between the two of them, but I took the millinery one, and I haven’t looked back since.’ MacNeice sees the transition between college and the professional world as being disjointed: ‘I think as a young designer, it can be particularly scary because there isn’t necessarily a clear cut path once you graduate. Trying to figure out what area of the industry you want to get into is difficult, and to really do that means you need to intern, which a lot of recent graduates just can’t afford to do.’
In the Fold has proved that there is an appetite for youthful Irish fashion, if the successes of Rocha and Romeril hasn’t already been evidence enough. Kinsella adds that she has been advised that if she was to travel to the Middle East to sell her work, she would be picked up far more quickly by a retailer than she is in Ireland. With projects like In the Fold, ID2015 realises that you can take the work to the buyers and influencers but keep the designers at home, if you fund them and equip them with the proper skills. If young designers like Laura were helped with their travel expenses to potential sales bases such as the Middle East, they could afford to keep growing their brands and manufacturing bases in Ireland.
In the Fold was a strangely invigorating experience for those who attended in London, and the sponsor, Kildare Village, is bringing it home for people to see for themselves in the spring. I’d highly recommend you feast your eyes on it, because it’s the beginning of a new, supportive era for fashion design in Ireland, if ID2015 gets its way. As Aisling Farinella says forcefully, ‘The more events we have, the more noise we can create about Irish fashion, the more we can talk about Irish designers, the more people become aware of it, the more people will want to buy it.’
Words: Kate Coleman
Photos: Stephen Walsh
