Designer Peter O'Brien is horrified by the pole-dancer, fake-tan look favoured by so many young Irishwomen, he tells Deirdre McQuillanon the eve of his second collection for a|wear.
"I love looking at wonderful women," sighs Peter O'Brien, the couturier, whose second collection for a|wear goes on sale next Thursday. His collaboration with the Irish high-street chain has been fruitful and exciting, with a sell-out first collection and more ambitious plans in the pipeline.
"What's fun about this is that a a|wear's base is broad, and to design a collection that both a 16-year-old and a 60-year-old would like to buy is setting a bit of a challenge. Ultimately, you try to pare it back to basics that are not boring," he says.
The photograph taken to launch the collection, of nine women wearing items from O'Brien's new range reflects his belief that style can be individual and ageless. "It illustrates my war cry perfectly," he says. Each member of the group - varying in age and background, from 18-year-old Kate O'Brien, the designer's niece, to the 63-year-old model Lorna Britton - was chosen for her particular sense of style. "I wanted to use not models but people I admired or knew personally, so it would feel real and have integrity," he says.
Known for his outspoken views on the way Irish women dress, O'Brien is complaining, the morning we meet, about teenage style. "I passed a girls' school in Dublin this morning, and all of them looked as if they had been to the mortician's and made up for their coffins. They were so heavily made up they looked waxed, as if they were dead. Ireland is the only country where there is this relationship between women and foundation - and its first cousin, fake tan. It's one of the impenetrable mysteries of the Irish. I think pale Irish skin is beautiful. Why cover it up?"
O'Brien is equally eloquent about what he dismisses as current notions of glamour. "Dublin is full of wonderful-looking women, and I wish they had the courage and confidence to assume it instead of this awful so-called glamour, which means too much make-up, too-high heels and too-orange tans. Images from celebrity magazines and reality-TV shows would make you believe that the only way for a woman to be attractive is by looking like a pole-dancer. Continuity announcers on TV now wear cocktail dresses at 9am."
He admires his fellow designers Dries Van Noten and John Rocha, "because there is gentleness in their approach to women, and I hope I transmit that in my clothes. The world would be very dreary if everybody had a reverend-mother aesthetic like mine", he says with a smile.
In the four years since his return to Dublin from Paris he has been enjoying theatre work, and his costume designs for the Gate in Dublin, among them those for the recent production of Private Lives, have been widely praised. "It's utterly different [from fashion design], because you don't have to worry about selling the frocks afterwards."
His limited collection for a|wear is small, at 20 pieces, but focused, with rosette flourishes on coat hems and jackets or trailing across the sleeve of a jersey dress. That the collection, which will be available in 11 a|wear stores, started with a toile rather than from an industrially flat cut pattern is an important detail. "It is an extra step in production, which is expensive, but it makes a difference, a rounder, more three-dimensional fit," he says.
Shoes are included for the first time: three styles in collaboration with the footwear designer Julian Berwick; only 300 pairs have been made.
There are also echoes of his previous collection. "If designers have strong identities their signature touches will crop up again and again, and I will always like long sleeves, shrunken jackets, white shirts and swishy skirts, and I love chiffon. A designer is like a storyteller, and basically you must tell the same story every season with different words, because it's your story and because it's what you do."
Peter's Friends: Peter O'Brien on the women in his a|wear campaign
MICHELLE CULLEN
Winner of a|wear's Can You Fit This? competition
"We liked the idea of having a more mature woman in the group, and, at 44, she believes that style is about attitude rather than age," says O'Brien. Glass button coat, € 250; boots, Cullen's own.
MO KELLY
Artist and DJ
"I think she is extraordinary - very cool, very artistic and creative - and she's also charming and lovely," says O'Brien. "I love her Converse trainers with the clothes. She's like a fashion drawing come to life."
NIAMH CLINTON
Manager, Cherche Midi, and buyer
"I went into Cherche Midi looking for shoes and instead found this little elfin creature, this wonderful-looking girl. She was what is called in Paris a casting sauvage, when you pick people off the street."
GRÁINNE SEOIGE
RTÉ presenter
"Gráinne and I have been pals for a long time, and she is one of the real Irish beauties, with an amazing, voluptuous figure. Her image is very groomed, professional and glamorous, and I longed to see her pared back, to see how unbelievably gorgeous she is," says O'Brien.
OONAGH FINN
Fashion stylist
"She is utterly, innately 1940s, and has a great sense of fun and the best legs in Ireland," says O'Brien.
CAROLINE REYNOLDS
Creative director of a|wear
"I work closely with her, and she's incredibly creative and helps me enormously with things like packaging, swing tags and labels. She has innate, brilliant style," says O'Brien.
LORNA BRITTON
Part-time model
"I wanted the age range to be as wide as possible, and I had seen Lorna at a Richard Lewis show. When she's in a show, all women smile when she comes out. It's so reassuring to look at a more mature woman, with such magnificent white hair, and there's something very life-affirming about Lorna. I thought she would be perfect, and she was.
NIAMH O'ROURKE
Stylist
"She is a creature from Bloomsbury come to life," says O'Brien. "Her profile and her jawline are beyond belief."
KATE O'BRIEN
Student
"She spent all her childhood summers in Paris," O'Brien says about his niece, "and I used to dress her in Bonpoint dresses and Mary Jane shoes. Now she's 18 and in day-to-day life a Goth, so she came with her Docs and piercings but grew her eyebrows back for the shoot."