The theme for the second-ever Ireland Fashion Week last week was “coming home”. It’s one I was eager for – I joined the opening dinner at Slane Castle on Wednesday, October 7, ready to tell everyone I’d meet about my Irish grandparents. Only I quickly realised I was just one of many other tourists visiting the country, keen to trace some kind of Irish lineage. It seems everyone wants to be Irish right now. It’s even a running joke online, where people post photos of emerald green shamrocks and Guinnesses and write about yearning for Ireland “the same way white men yearn for Japan”.
Whether you credit the likes of Paul Mescal or the fact that Ireland is one of the most pro-Palestinian nations in the world for young people’s growing fascination with the country, its cultural capital hasn’t exactly put Ireland at the centre of the international fashion map. It’s not that there aren’t talented Irish designers – Sinéad O’Dwyer’s name comes to mind, and Jonathan Anderson famously started his career in Dublin – but, according to Gemma Holden, a 23-year-old designer from Kilkenny, there’s been a long-held belief that you have to go to London or Paris to “do well”. With the likes of Visa-backed Ireland Fashion Week – not to mention Dior staging its Pre-Fall 2027 show at Trinity College – Holden says that sentiment is shifting.
“The first Ireland Fashion Week was the year I graduated,” says Holden. “To leave college and be able to come into something like this is reassuring that there is a future for us in Ireland.” Holden was just one of many talented young Irish designers featured at DAMHSA, Ireland Fashion Week’s graduate show. There, in between dance breaks from former Riverdance captains Ruth McKenna, Jordan McCormick and Bill Cornally, Holden presented her own take on Ireland’s fairy forts through a muddied corset dress, leaning into traditional Irish folklore.
Meanwhile, Abby O’Connell, the founder of SEST, sent a geometric, floor-length piece down the runway, playing with the fact that in traditional Irish dance, you don’t use your arms. The black leather, she says, was in direct contrast to Irish tweed. “Being a designer in Ireland is hard, I’m not going to lie, because people don’t take Irish fashion seriously,” she says. “But that’s what we’re here for today – Ireland Fashion Week means you get taken more seriously, and it gives you hope to push on.”
This year, Ireland Fashion Week brought together more than 90 designers – a mix of established and emerging talent. The opening show, Irish Roots, saw supermodels Coco Rocha and Alana Hadid on the runway, with Irish artists and personalities like KhakiKid, LYRA and Laura Whitmore all in attendance. But according to Ireland Fashion Week founder Ashley McDonnell, the purpose of the second edition was not simply to add more shows, but to create more “meaningful opportunities”. That means connecting designers, supporting businesses and, in McDonnell’s words, “building an ecosystem that can have a lasting impact”.
“To leave college and be able to come into something like this is reassuring that there is a future for us in Ireland”
At the Irish Edit Showroom, on Friday, October 10, I spoke to some of the 29 designers on display, asking them what it takes to run a successful fashion brand from Ireland. Bray Zhang, who runs a namesake brand, says the fashion industry in the country is at a “pivotal point”. “I often hear the phrase, ‘It’s trendy to be Irish, to wear Irish,” he says. “Trends are good, but what’s going to separate Irish design from Paris and London? I think using heritage fabrics like tweed helps, but it’s still finding its identity.” Ireland Fashion Week, then, is helping to define that.
For Kimberly Tino, who creates bedazzled Tato and Kerrygold purses for her brand Maya Grisham, the point is leaning into symbols that are intrinsically Irish. She says forty per cent of her customer base are in America. “A lot of Americans have some sort of Irish ancestry, so it [the bags] ties them to that,” she says. “Others just love the country, the greenery, and the peace”. Franklin, the 23-year-old behind the streetwear brand Charlatans, also has an increasingly American patronage. “The Irish do it the best,” he says. “If you’re not tapped in already, you should be because if you’re there for the revolution on time, it’ll be lovely”.
As Americans reach for their own piece of Ireland, Frankie, the writer behind Meditations for the Anxious, says being Irish (or “green-pilled”) has become aspirational. “Being the least evil country that also speaks English, it’s becoming crisis PR for guilt-ridden postgrads to distance themselves from their own country’s baggage,” he said in a recent TikTok video. But Irish fashion is about much more than escapist fantasy, as Ireland Fashion Week made clear. Rachel Maguire, the designer behind the SZA-favourite brand Rashhiiid, hosted a presentation that attracted a line down the block of young Irish people who could see themselves in her colourful, fluffy world.
To fashion designer and textile artist Mary O’Sullivan, Irish fashion is defined by its storytelling. “There’s a lot of discussion about our fabrics, but it’s more than just our tweeds and linen – it’s the people who make the materials and the conversations and community shared with that,” she says. While many of O’Sullivan’s creative peers left the country as she stayed behind to have her daughter while at college, she no longer feels “left behind”. “There was this feeling of missing out on what it means to be an adult creative, but Ireland Fashion Week is giving me hope and a sense of belonging”.
Or take the highly anticipated Sinéad O’Dwyer show, for example, which centred around colour and movement. Perhaps no show on the schedule captured this year’s “coming home” theme more clearly than O’Dwyer’s presentation at Dublin City Hall. Following her show at the V&A in London this summer, and the acquisition of two of her designs by The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute earlier this year, O’Dwyer pointed out her family and friends to me post-show, including her best friend’s mum, who was waiting backstage. “It’s just really nice to be home,” she says.