The shamrock is reclaiming its cool and staging a comeback on the world stage – and with a new, 'cleaner' version, it's even a hit with fashion designers, writes ALANNA GALLAGHER
IT’S ALL coming up roses for the shamrock. The national symbol has had an overhaul, making it cooler – and cleaner – to wear. We’re leaving behind the soil-stained roots of our forefathers and favouring a neater kind of green. The fashion world has also taken note, and designers are now using the shamrock in clothing and accessories.
Traditional Irish shamrock has a proper stem and branches, says Eric Westphal of the St Patrick’s Shamrock Company in Dublin, which sells the old-fashioned variety. It was Westphal’s shamrock that graced the White House in 2009, when then taoiseach Brian Cowen posed with the shamrock bowl next to newly elected president Barack Obama.
In Ballinskelligs, Co Kerry,Anthos Teoranta grows another kind of green. Owner Pat Everett sells his hydroculture crop to a large player in the market, Living Shamrock. It was Ballinskelligs-grown shamrock that was presented to the US president last St Patrick’s Day.
The traditional shamrock was dirty, messy and wet with bits of soil clinging to it, says Everett. “This shamrock is ready-to-wear and won’t spoil your clothing.” These “clean” sprigs are presented in vials containing a mineral-rich hydrogel.
Anthos Teoranta grows 250,000 pieces per season and its clients include Centra and Supervalu.
And it would appear this cleaner shamrock is what the public wants. At Tesco Ireland, shamrock sales are up 10 per cent on last year so far, says spokesman Séamus Bannon. Last year, they sold both the traditional sprigs and hydrogel vials, although the latter was twice as popular.
Meanwhile, in the design world, everything is coming up clover as the shamrock is having its moment.
Parisian heavyweight Yves Saint Laurent’s fashion jewellery is emblazoned with shamrock motifs – including their five-carat gold Lucky Chyc earrings.
Fine jewellery brand Annoushka is also riding the wave with the introduction of a clover pendant made of green diamond and yellow gold.
Shamrock chic also informs the season’s colour palette. French label Lanvin’s green of the season is called shamrock. A dress in this colour, for the princely sum of €1,235, has already sold out at Brown Thomas in Dublin and online.
It may be setting the international catwalks alight, but the colour green is still a difficult sell in Ireland, says Brown Thomas buying director Shelly Corkery. “Of all the fashion colours on offer green, in all its 40 shades, is the one you most resist before you buy,” she says.
The shamrock emblem is also big in homewares this year. Italian design house Alessi has a new open-work fruit holder featuring the design, while French furniture company Ligne Roset has introduced a Clover Pot by Japanese-born Kensaku Oshiro.
London-based Irish jewellery designer Merle O’Grady, who counts Rihanna and Beyonce among her fans, has found another application for shamrock: “I’m a massive fan of nail art and would love to have a tiny shamrock embedded in gel on each of my nails, probably with some green glitter thrown in – so bad it’s good! It’s a reasonably subtle yet frivolous way to get into the spirit of things.”
Just what St Patrick would have made of this is hard to guess. It is said he used the shamrock to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity to the Irish. But which type of shamrock did he use? You’d have to ask St Patrick himself, says Westphal, as there are many varieties being grown in the country.
Westphal is exporting less and less of his family’s variety of root-and-soil shamrock due to the strict certification requirements set by our own Department of Agriculture and homeland security in the US. However, hydroculture shamrock doesn’t have soil on the roots, making its export less of a bureaucratic headache.
The Department of Foreign Affairs chooses the shamrock that will be presented to the president of the US. It’s a tendering process, says a department spokesman. “We get samples in from companies interested in tendering and select on their services offered, their price and the quality of their shamrock.”
The annual competition feels like the Oscars, Everett says. “You [often] don’t know if your shamrock is the one until you see it in the Waterford Crystal presentation bowl on the steps of the White House.” The Department announced late last week that it will be Everett’s crop that will be presented to Obama later this week by Taoiseach Enda Kenny.
And what of the unsold shamrock after St Patrick’s Day? Any remaining is sold to local farmers in Co Kerry, who feed it to their sheep.
