Colin Burke is an award-winning designer of luxury, handmade knitwear that combines Irish traditional motifs with modern structure and silhouettes …
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR PARENTS? Very hard working. I have two younger sisters, and we are all very different. Our parents always encouraged us in whatever direction we took. I went down the design route, one of my sisters is a dentist, and the other works in finance and pensions.
HOW DO YOU SEE THEIR INFLUENCE IN YOUR LATER LIFE? My dad’s background is in finance, and my mum worked in a few different areas. She started off in the HSE, then she had her own jewellery business for a while and now she’s a personal shopper. She has a big interest in fashion, and so did my dad’s mum, so they got on very well. I think that had an impact on me growing up, but I didn’t really see it.
WHAT DID YOU THINK YOU’D GROW UP TO BE? From a very young age, I loved art and was constantly drawing as a child. But no one I knew had ever gone to art college. For a long time I thought I’d be an architect.
DID YOUR SCHOOL MAKE A BIG IMPACT ON YOUR LIFE? We grew up in Claregalway, and went to primary school there, but we went to The Bish in Galway for secondary. Art wasn’t even a subject there. In sixth year, I moved to Yeats College, which is very focused on results and getting a good Leaving Cert, because I still had the ambition to become an architect. I took up art as a subject for the first time that year, and the principal told me I was mad, but it was the subject I got an A1 in. Those 100 points got me a place in an architecture degree course.
WHEN DID YOUR FOCUS MOVE AWAY FROM ARCHITECTURE AND INTO DESIGN? Something told me to defer my architecture place and so I did a portfolio course in GIT. I then got offers for Limerick College of Art and Design, Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology and NCAD. I still had a lot of uncertainty, but I moved to Dublin and went to NCAD.
WHERE DID THE PASSION FOR KNITWEAR START? In college, I felt I needed to go down the design route rather than fine art, because employment and a future career were in the back of my mind. So I did design. Knit was an elective on the course, and then I kept it on and focused on it for my final year. I liked that it was work I could do with my hands, and I liked the structure and shapes I could create. It felt like I was feeding back into that love of architecture, because, for me, it was always about creating structure and form and silhouette.
WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO COMMIT TO YOUR OWN LUXURY HAND-KNIT BRAND? The idea of wanting to be an architect took a long time to leave me. After NCAD, I applied to do architecture again. I had this conversation about it with [fashion designer] Helen Cody and her husband Rory, who is an architect, in their house and he said, “You’d be silly to do architecture. You’re so creative and it has so many limitations and rules and regulations. You’d be very frustrated.” It was just one conversation, but I trusted that advice. I was about a year into my own brand then, and I stuck with it.
WHAT WAS YOUR BREAKTHROUGH MOMENT? In the very beginning, I was stocked in Brown Thomas at a pop-up and at that stage it was just myself and maybe two or three other knitters doing the work. The big decision for me then was whether I’d keep my collection hand-knit or go down a machine-knit route and whether I could keep the production in Ireland. At that point, I was in my mid-20s and it was all about the craft. I didn’t really think about the financial side, but now I’m 30 and the business side is mostly what I think about.
WHAT HAVE BEEN THE IMPORTANT FEMALE RELATIONSHIPS IN YOUR LIFE? I would turn to my mum for advice. We have a great bond, and she really understands my product too. My mum and my partner Danielle would be the two women I’d turn to for advice in business or personal life. Danielle is studying accountancy, so she’s a great support. They’re the two who tell me what I need to do.
WHO DO YOU ADMIRE PROFESSIONALLY? An Irish person that I really admire is Jonathan Anderson [recently announced as Creative Director of menswear at Dior]. He’s a really smart guy who has done amazing work for his own brand [JW Anderson] and other brands. It’s great to see him get the recognition for that.
YOUR FRIENDSHIPS ARE FOR THE MOST PART … Very strong and loyal. In my early 20s, I would have been socialising an awful lot, with a big circle of friends, but as time has gone on, my circle has gotten smaller. My circles in business have grown, but my personal life circles have become more refined and I’m happy with that.
YOUR STYLE SIGNIFIER IS … My loafers. People always comment on my loafers.
YOU BUY YOUR CLOTHES WHEN … I have no intention of buying anything. I never really buy on the high street. I buy clothes based on quality and if I’ll get the wear out of them. I like understated clothes – nothing with a logo.
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE SHOES? Danielle bought me a lovely pair of Herme?s loafers for my 30th birthday, so I’d have to say them.
DO YOU USE SKINCARE PRODUCTS? Yes, but I’m very bad at buying for myself so I just use gifts from Danielle. She buys me Clarins for Men.
YOUR EXERCISE ROUTINE INCLUDES … I don’t exercise. That’s one thing I’m not very good at. I constantly tell myself that I don’t have the time, but I need to make the time for it. I have good intentions and every time Danielle and I go for a walk, I say, “This is it, I’m starting now”. But it never happens. Once I get stuck into work in the mornings, nothing else happens.
YOU MOST RECENTLY LISTENED TO … A Desert Island Dress episode with Nikki Creedon. It’s a podcast where the hosts [Katriona Flynn and Dee Duffy] get people to talk about their life through clothing. It was a turning point early in my career when Nikki started stocking my brand in her boutique, Havana [in Donnybrook] and I’m very grateful to her. She guided me from the kind of exhibition-type pieces I was doing at the start into something more refined and more wearable and the customer responded really well to that.
YOU DEAL WITH A SETBACK BY … I try not to dwell on it for too long. You can’t change what went wrong, so you need to just accept it, move on and try not to let that happen again.
A HOLIDAY YOU’D LIKE TO REPEAT … Myself and Danielle went to Italy two years ago, and we often talk about going back. But then we go to Connemara regularly, an hour out the road, and that can be just as good.
DO YOU COOK? I love to cook and cook most days. I find it very relaxing and people tell me I’m a really good cook.
DO YOU HAVE A HOBBY? People often ask me to give them advice on interiors and I love that. I’m helping a couple of friends at the moment who are moving into a new house, planning the layout and the design for that. I suppose that’s the architecture coming back around.
WHAT’S YOUR IDEAL WEEKEND? Probably going to Connemara with Danielle and having some nice food, maybe to O’Dowd’s in Roundstone or Ballynahinch Castle. Or it could just be at home, cooking, not going anywhere at all.
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