Style & Success: The Award-Winning Irish Fashion Designers To Add To Your Wish List

Main image: Róisín Pierce. 

Nicki Hoyne’s slow fashion brand is going from strength to strength. An impressive three nominations at both the Drapers Footwear and Sustainable Fashion Awards earlier this year saw Hoyne taking home the award for Best New Footwear Brand 2023. Meanwhile, her effervescent shoes and accessories are catnip for customers wanting well-made pieces that aren’t afraid to stand out. See the Oversized Bow Pump in pink suede, €220, which chimes perfectly with the current obsession with Barbie dressing. However, it’s the point-toe leopard print mules (pictured above) which nod to a 1960s sensibility that win out for us. You can shop a limited edition exclusive Nicki Hoyne collection at Brown Thomas CREATE, at level 2 Brown Thomas, Grafton Street, until August 20.  www.nickihoyne.com.

Winner of the RDS Craft Award Bursary 2022, Kildare textile designer Amy Kerr works with 100 per cent Irish wool from the only native breed of sheep left in the country. Her ‘baibailin bán’ (meaning white bobble, as gaeilge) hand-crocheted bags, €180, merge one of the coolest handbag trends with a love of indigenous fabrics. www.aktextiles.ie. 

The Brown Thomas Designer to Watch bursary prize was awarded to NCAD’s Eve O’Reilly. Eve’s collection, Blue Rinse, features dresses, outerwear and headpieces combining prints, photography, knit, screen-printing and embellishment to create unusual, glamorous pieces that celebrate life and growing older. You can shop her pieces at Brown Thomas CREATE, at level 2 Brown Thomas, Grafton Street, until August 20. 

Irish model Lorna Foran during fittings with Michael Stewart for Standing Ground’s spring summer 2023 collection. Image: Instagram @standing_ground_.

Hailing from Kilkishen in Co Clare, Michael Stewart is a graduate of Limerick School of Art & Design who is finding international success. The winner of the Design & Crafts Council of Ireland Future Maker Award in 2022, Stewart’s label Standing Ground showed for the second time at London Fashion Week in February as part of Fashion East, a talent incubator for promising designers which counts JW Anderson and Simone Rocha as alumni. His sculptural designs, executed with couture-like precision, have been endorsed by W Magazine and Edward Enninful, of British Vogue, who praised his refreshing approach to fashion. The brand’s name Standing Ground was inspired by standing stones, the large upright stones which date back to the Bronze Age which are scattered around Ireland – a link to his home that Stewart nurtures throughout his collections. @standing_ground_

Dublin designer Róisín Pierce made international headlines earlier this year when she dressed Alexa Chung for the 2023 Met Gala in May. Chung wore a transparent floral detail top and coordinating skirt with an appliquéd floating flower overthrow from Pierce’s Two For Joy collection. This isn’t the first time that Pierce has received international acclaim, however: she was a winner of the prestigious Chanel Prix des Métiers d’Art in 2019. The textile design graduate was a finalist in the LVMH prize in 2022 and was also name-checked by Forbes in its 30 Under 30 list as a rising star in art and culture. Pierce’s designs are hauntingly beautiful – frothy, ethereal and feminine. They’re not afraid to venture into the dark, either. The MNÁ I BHLÁTH collection was a nod to the Magdalene Laundries in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the unmarried mothers who not only had to endure abuse, but also manufactured ceremonial clothing for communions, baptisms and weddings. We can’t wait to see what she does next.  www.roisinpierce.com.