Deirdre McQuillan searches for the potential new stars of the Irish fashion industry
Somebody once said that fashion students are rebels with a style cause. This is the time of year for their graduate shows, those brief moments of glory before they set forth with portfolios into the choppy waters of the clothing industry. Next Thursday, 17 students will graduate from the Limerick School of Art, with a show in the South Court Hotel, while NCAD will stage its annual graduate show in the RDS a week later on Wednesday, June 2nd. Somewhere among these class acts may be the new bankable stars of the Irish fashion industry.
"They're a very, very feisty bunch," says Prof Angela Woods of her 10 students, "quite a compact group, not too chummy and quite competitive". They are certainly diverse in approach; Louise O'Kelly makes her own fabric, Sarah Comerford is inspired by Brazilian surf culture, Sophia Berman has an outstanding colour sense and Naomi Givens's Belfast background informs a collection that merges military and evening wear. The only male graduate, Brian Moore, mixes references to the Spire and the Aran sweater in an ambitious menswear collection.
"I sourced the architects' drawings of the Spire and translated them into prints and metallic silks," he says. In June, he will head off to Paris to work with Danny Kearns, another Irish designer, on John Galliano's menswear collection.
In Limerick, where Patricia Kielthy and Ann Melinn jointly supervise the fashion course, this year marks a record number of graduates from the college, including the winner of the Persil Young Designer of the Year Award, Anna Vahey Casey. It's the third time in four years that Limerick has taken first prize. Two of last year's graduates have gone on to further degrees in London, others have taken a further knitwear course, while one graduate, Niamh Russell, was headhunted for Cacharel.
Kielthy stresses the importance of work placements in third year - "they can change people profoundly" and now wants to expand the three-month placement period to six. "Survival of the fashion industry in Ireland is based on having high creativity and highly capable people - you have to make it and turn a profit and that has always been our ethos."
For Anna Vahey Casey, whose graduate collection called Morillo is based on the movement of the matador in the bullring, further education is her priority, and her next paso doble is to go to London to do a course in innovative pattern cutting, armed with her prize money of €10,000.
"It will open up my mind a bit more," she says. From Strandhill in Sligo, she is a woman of strong determination, insistent, according to her course tutors, on getting every detail right.
To gain a work placement in Italy last year, she did a night course in Italian and found work with Prince Igor Von Furstenburg in Rome, learning all about the Italian clothing industry in the process. She would love to work with Zac Posen in New York.
Though some may stay on home turf, most want to go abroad, and all are aware that the future of Irish fashion lies in outsourcing, getting clothes made abroad rather than at home. "I am using whoever is left," says designer Joanne Hynes, a former graduate of Limerick, now with her own label. "But I had to go to Hong Kong last year to source manufacturers. It's a secretive, cut-throat industry at every point; people guard the names of their manufacturers closely."
Of last year's NCAD fashion and textiles graduates, six are working in Ireland with Irish designers, four in London and one is doing an MA course at the Royal College of Art, while two have established their own ranges at home.
Whatever the future will hold for this year's crop, there'll be fun and a lot of fresh ideas and creativity worth seeing on the catwalks before they take off into the fashion firmament.