Pioneering new store Nowhere on Aungier Street have made it their mission to combat the uniformity of Irish menswear with straight-off-the-runway fashion and inventive, considered clothing. Totally Dublin sat down with co-owner Brian Teeling over a cup of super-fruit tea to find out what it’s like to be on the forefront of men’s fashion.
Why did you decide to open Nowhere?
It stemmed from myself and David [Erixon] chatting about having nowhere to shop in Dublin. That’s not where the name came from! The name came from a band called Ride, an early 1990s shoegaze band from Oxford who had an album called Nowhere, which is one of my favourite albums. So it stemmed from a lack of options here – as a guy you were either restricted to Brown Thomas or the high street, and we’re not really either of them. It was something that I was working on for a while before I met David, and in January of last year we ran into each other, went for coffee to talk about what we wanted to do, and decided to balls-up, put our money where our mouth is, and open a shop.
What is the ethos behind Nowhere?
It’s not something that I generally think about, having an idea behind us that’s forced, or that there’s no room or give there, but I think, walking into the store, it’s a space that you can go and find something quite unique and also find something quite easy to wear as well. It’s a case of you finding a blue worker jacket by Craig Green, which is quite easy to wear, and in the same vein find a big sparkly coat by Alan Taylor. You’re getting complete runway pieces and you’re also getting really ultra-wearable pieces – with a twist. There is a level of opulence of the garments we have in-store, but it’s all about detailing and a focus on fabrics and compositions, rather than luxury for luxury’s sake, or branding for massive branding’s sake. It’s extremely considered clothing.
Tell us about some of the designers that Nowhere stocks.
For S/S15 we’ve got around 15 to 20 brands in-store. It’s a mix of quite utility wear and design. Porter by Oshida from Japan handmade bags, we also have Côte&Ciel for bags, which hold all your technology, they use high tech fabrics like rainproof nylon, rubberised cotton, bags with hoods in them for when you’re cycling. There’s tutterheim heavy-duty raincoats with sealed sleeves broadly based on Swedish fishermen’s traditional raincoats… you’d have quite utility basics there.TD126
Then we’d have more fashion-focused pieces; we support a lot of London designers as well as a lot of Irish designers. I feel that London is really where it’s at now menswear-wise, it’s exciting, it’s really strong at the moment, so we’d support a lot of those guys – the likes of Mathew Miller, Craig Green, Christopher Raeburn, Alan Taylor, and a couple more London designers coming in for next season, in A/W15. Craig Green really is the shit-hot designer of the moment – we have his runway pieces in-store. Christopher Raeburn is interesting as he’s really mixing utility and fashion, in very unusual ways, like remaking jackets from disused military garments, parachute silk, fighter suits, and life-rafts.
Our Irish designers are Alan Taylor and Filthy Club. Alan has such a talent, we really like how he’s utilised an Irish fabric like tweed and made it his own, and we’re happy to see him move on from that now season after season. Filthy Club is a brand new label set up by Irish photographer Josh Gordon, we’re really excited to have Filthy Club on board, and I think it’s good to support a label in its infancy.
Then we’d have a lot of brands from Europe and the USA which complement our Irish and UK designers. A Kind of Guise from Munich have, in my opinion, the best around for men, the best quality of fabric and of how they’re made. They often work with Steif, the German teddy bear manufacturer, to produce astrakhan and cashmere wools. We have IMA Japanese socks, knitted in Japan, and Fanmail, which is a very ethically minded basics label from New York. We also have special books and magazines that are art and photography focussed, like Another Man, Travel Almanac, and some great books by Yayoi Kusama, and other Japanese artists. We do have a ‘top-shelf’, let’s say, with some nude magazines – all very arty; Butt Magazine, Terry Richardson, Baron Mag, it’s not just erotic for the sake of it, they are genuinely interesting!
What else goes on in Nowhere?
We do hold some events here, if the idea appeals to us, but what we are really excited about is launching our web store by the end of February, so we’ll be able to sell internationally. We’ve been really focussed on our web store and working on it for a long time. It could be seen as quite a big undertaking for such a small store but we are capable of doing it, and feel that especially as we will be stocking Irish designers, we think it could give those guys a better reach too.
Where do you see men’s fashion going in Ireland?
It’s a slow process, there’s always been certain guys that do dress really well, not just for their girlfriends or other guys, and we’re seeing them come in but generally here in Ireland, a lot of men are dressing to ‘fit in’. There still is that epidemic of washed-out trouser-jean, if you walk by Copper’s any night you’ll see it in the queue! But there slowly is a ‘fashion’ that you can notice – looking at Conor McGregor or the proliferation of the ‘man-bun’, five years ago you’d be pelted off the street!
Drop in to Nowhere at 64 Aungier Street, Dublin 2 or find them online at www.anowhereman.com
Words: Honor Fitzsimons
