Graham Cruz, stylist
I've been known to get out of bed at three in the morning and crank up the sewing machine to get something done. It's a great way to just switch off because you have to concentrate on what you're doing. I've just moved into a new house so I have loads of curtains to make. I'm a whizz at curtains.
When you're making anything it's all about coming up with the idea and seeing it through. Loads of times it's remaking something. I'm a bit of a devil for buying something, bringing it home, ripping it apart and remaking it.
I love to just start with a big bag of fabric, loads of pins and some scissors and see what I end up with. By the end of it you have something new in your life. I had a clothing label for a while consisting of one-off pieces and even when I sat myself down to make pieces for that, I was never quite sure what was going to emerge. I sort of threw myself into it, scissors wailing. If I set off with a preconceived idea it never quite worked.
The reason I started making clothes and remaking things was to get away from things that are mass-produced. Now every high-street store seems to have a section offering customised T-shirts. But it's not exactly authentic when you have 40 customised T-shirts lined up on the rack. It's a bit like customising is the new mass production.
When I was a kid I was always gluing and sticking stuff to my clothes. I was meeting people wearing the same clothes so I just went out and bought a sewing machine and decided to bash things up and have a go, even though I'd no real idea how to work it.
I recently did the wardrobe for RTÉ's Celebrity Jigs 'n' Reelsand found that I was doctoring and re-jigging the outfits for that, just to get a better fit and get more out of them.
The piece I'm most proud of is the most ridiculous thing I've ever made. I bought an old Louis Vuitton holdall in a kind of posh charity shop and turned it into a skirt and bra top. I've used it a couple of times in fashion shoots. It's my Louis Vuitton bikini. It's utterly ridiculous and almost unwearable. But it's my favourite piece.