Looking around last week's Showcase 2000 at the RDS in Dublin, you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd stumbled into some gigantic global supermarket. While almost 100 per cent of the goods on display - knitwear, fashion, jewellery and accessories as well as other gifts and crafts - are Irish, the buyers browsing through the stalls represent every nationality under the sun: huddles of Japanese men with interpreters in tow fingered chunky knit jumpers; some Texan women exclaimed over a tray of silver jewellery; and two Germans quizzed a linen-maker about her baby dresses.
Then there are the Irish buyers, determinedly stalking the aisles, eyeing up anything new, anything different, anything that might just make their shop complete this summer or next winter. Showcase is closed to the public but many of the manufacturers who come to show off their wares are the ones to look out for in the shops over the coming months. While the emphasis was often on the craft end of the market - few of the Republic's big fashion designers exhibit, for example - it is a good place to spot interesting newcomers or to catch up with small manufacturers making the perfect bag or the grooviest earrings.
Knitwear is usually particularly strong at Showcase, be it chunky knits of the Aran-jumper variety or silky-fine wisps for nights out on the town. Elaine Curtis - who is no newcomer to the Irish fashion stage, and whose client list includes the President, Mrs McAleese, The Corrs and Enya - is making her Showcase debut this year. "With knitwear, it's not easy to do one-offs, so I really wanted to get some big orders. I also want to develop the export side of the business," she explains. If you're a Curtis fan, you should keep an eye out in her usual outlets such as Dublin's Design Centre this spring, for such gems as the silky jewel-bright twin sets - fuchsia trimmed with yellow gold and tiny hand-beading is a particularly striking number. For autumn/winter, she reports that orders came flooding in for the gorgeous boucle coats with the burgundy wild mohair collars.
A completely different animal is Electronic Sheep across the hall. The brainchild of former next-door neighbours and NCAD graduates, Brenda Aherne and Helen Delaney, the three-year-old company has a small but enviable list of stockists in Ireland and the UK. After making her first range of hats some three years ago, Aherne set off with a trolley-full of wares to trend-setting stores including The Cross and the London Beach Store in London, and Tribe, Sabotage and the Kilkenny Shop in Dublin.
The hats - urban, contemporary and very street chic - went down a bomb. Gloves, mittens, scarves and, more recently, fitted zip-up tops and T-shirts emblazoned with Delaney's art prints have been flying out ever since. Particularly cute are tiny baby mittens which Brenda has christened the Electronic Lamb range, while the chunky snoods which will hit the shops are good for a bit of street luxury. Keep an eye out for their cult comic-book-cum-catalogue which features the adventures of the Electronic Sheep and his lissome girlfriend, Pandora.
After years of taking orders for the smallest size in men's jumpers, Donegal company Fisherman Out Of Ireland has decided to create a women's wear range which they showed off for the first time in Showcase. Designer Louise Elliott was put in charge of the project and came up with a collection that is sure to burst out of the tourist market and onto the high street. Felted lambswool is her chosen material for one collection of sleeveless tops, cropped jumpers and skirts, which all feature a graduated band of colour.
There's a touch of Missoni to the range, with colours including rust, desert, mossy green, grey and dark blue, and Louise vows that "everything is soft. We didn't want any scratchy yarns." Watch out for the range in Blarney Woollen Mills stores. Also showing a new range for the first time is Joan Millar, a knitwear designer who is an old hand at Showcase. During a dinner at Roly's Bistro with potter Nicholas Mosse during last year's Showcase, the pair decided to try putting Mosse's pottery designs together with Millar's knitwear. The resulting collection of sweaters, cardigans and cushions - adorned with the familiar rose, pansy, tulip and landscape designs - is walking off the shelves, with Japanese buyers queuing up to place orders.
"I found a linen/wool mix made Northern Ireland which exactly matches the colour of Nicky's glaze," says Millar, whose own range of cashwool separates and felted jackets are also selling extremely well. Meanwhile, Nicholas Mosse and his wife, Susan Mosse, have been busy promoting the collection in New York.
Over at Edmund McNulty's stand, most of the buyers are pausing to ooh and aah over his jellyfish-style floor cushions which are knitted up in shades of grey mohair. "The New Yorkers are going mad for those," he muses, adding that Duck Lane, the new Smithfield design market, also placed an order. Other pieces going well for McNulty, who only branched out into homeware last season, include a rather military-style sweater range in seaweed green, pebble and mushroom alpaca.
"The Germans won't touch anything unless it's 100 per cent pure fibre," explains McNulty, who has recently sourced an industrial manufacturer in Kildare who will knit up the stuff. Just nearby, Sheena McKeon is winding down from another successful day at Showcase. Delicately stitched, layered, pleated and appliqued, her bags, scarves, cushions and throws are small masterpieces. Working mainly in silk organza and silk dupion, she is offering either a slick collection of reds, greys and blacks - particularly popular with the Americans and the Irish - or an ethereal range of light pinks, custards and blues, which the Japanese buyers love.
`They're great for wearing with a suit to the office, but really you can put them with anything," she observes. Just down the way, another young designer is also doing beautiful things with silk. Karyn Hurley has hung her capsule collection of exquisitely tailored blouses, dresses and skirts from fine wires, so they resemble an exhibition of modern art.
"My aim is to make easy-to-wear, feminine, natural clothes which have a real feel-good factor," she explains. However, her clothes, which she currently makes herself, speak for themselves - they look almost like pieces of china, so perfect is every seam and fine ruffle. Look out for them in Roccoco, and expect to see a lot more of Karyn Hurley in future. Next door, jewellery designer Des Doyle of Ova is leaning on his tray of chunky silver jewellery. There's a lot going on here: sprays of nylon and freshwater pearls make up spiky chokers; asymmetric shapes of silver rolled through paper are folded to make ear-rings, and 18-carat gold forms an astonishing three-legged ring. "What I try and do," says Doyle, "is make really simple forms. It's about an absence of decoration really." His next big project is to create bracelets in Irish woods for a new National Museum jewellery range.
For many, the final port of call before disappearing out the door of the RDS is the Alchemy Knitwear stall. Many buyers already know Liesa O'Keeffe's intricate knits, but many more are lured in by her new venture into bags. Adorable felted numbers in grey alpaca or cashmere, these were dotted with finely stitched red or pink flowers. "People have been buying them straight off the stall to take home," laughs O'Keeffe. For those outside the trade, they'll be available in the Blarney Woollen Mills in June.
