In a special feature for Totally Dublin, we take a rare glimpse behind the scenes at NCAD’s hallowed fashion department to speak with some of the freshest creative minds in Irish fashion. We selected four promising students to talk us through their collections and aspirations in the final weeks before this year’s hotly anticipated degree show.
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Could you tell us about your concept for the collection?
It all started with Cruella De Vil and the concept drawings for her by Mark Davis. What really drew me to them was the organic volume, but that was obviously achieved in fur and I didn’t really want to go down that route. Fur in that way is archaic, it’s heavy, and it’s not young, so I decided to go down a different route in trying to get volume. My research process compartmentalised the elements in my collection, so that was shape, and then I started to look further into haute couture. I found out this weird thing – that green is a taboo colour. I got fixated on that, how can green be bad luck? It’s only a colour, but in haute couture they take this superstition really seriously and there are seamstresses that refuse to sew up green clothes! I’ve always been drawn to all of the different colours of green you see in nature, so I started exploring green in its own right.
First I started through dying different shades of green, and gathering lots of green fabrics, and then I broke them down into different tones, where I then focused on a forest or bottle green colour. Within the confines of that tone I began to experiment with texture, also I came across a picture of a Frank Gehry sculpture stuck in amongst all of these vines, all this green with a mad architectural sculpture, so that led me to the weave textile which has a lot of structure and deliberate ‘unweaving’, leading on to the more organic elements like the feathers.
Did you do any work placements during your studies?
I did, I interned with Philip Treacy for the summer last year and I think that’s where my attraction to feathers started, because in his studio its floor-to-ceiling feathers, and then he has a whole other room downstairs that is just wall-to-wall feathers. One of my jobs as an intern was that I was to do stock take, so I had to go through all of the feathers! But I suppose that opened up learning about all different types of feathers, and what was great was that I got the suppliers contacts. They are a great company to work with, as you’re going straight to the source, and I’ve been working with them dying rooster feathers different shades of green to match the fabric, and then we developed them into a braid in order to make the feathers easier to apply. So in a way, my collection began back when I was interning.
Words: Honor Fitzsimons
Images: Jocelyn Murray-Boyne
