Snap up some vintage style

A brother and sister team has put together a creative and commercial success, writes ROSEMARY MACCABE

BLANAID HENNESSY is dressing the windows of Shutterbug on Kilkenny’s Patrick Street, with help from Brid Ní Laochdha, one of many part-time employees at the shop-cum-photography studio owned by Hennessy and her brother, Eoin. She is wearing a pair of cut-off shorts, a vintage floral blouse and a long, blood-red, sleeveless kimono; in her hair is a segment of a necklace she has re-purposed. On the rails is a similar mish-mash: sequined dresses, vintage Japanese silks and, at the back of the shop, a collection of menswear: chambray check shirts and army surplus jackets. The whitewashed walls are decorated with a mounted stag’s head and photographs taken by Eoin Hennessy and Ciúin Tracey.

“Myself and Eoin had a conversation a couple of years ago about what we wanted to do,” Hennessy says. “We wanted to have a studio and creative space, and we wanted to have a vintage store.”

Shutterbug started out as a photography studio – located at the back of the shop – and, indeed, a creative space, where the most creative people seemed to be the Hennessys themselves.

The building was once a bank. “We re-did the floors and exposed the original mosaic tiling,” Hennessy says. “This” – she points to a line in the floor – “is where the original bank counter was. A woman came into us to say her parents used to work here. Her father was the manager and her mother was a teller and they had lodgings upstairs.”

In the studio, a door right back in the bowels of the building swings closed – very slowly – to reveal itself as the original safe door. Inside the re-purposed safe are mirrors and lights, set up for hair and make-up.

One gets the impression, speaking to Hennessy, that the process has been a learning curve – not too steep, but not without its trials and, in a way, the growth of the space has come about organically.

“I started selling mostly my own things,” she says. “I had a huge collection of vintage and thought, why not use the space to sell it. Then everything sold and I realised I had to get more.”

Hennessy travels several times a year to build up stock. “For the most part, it is the dream job everyone thinks it is, but it can be a lot of work. Finding that one amazing thing makes it all worthwhile.” And her stock sells at a rate of knots, helped by a strong social media presence.

“A lot of our sales are done through Facebook,” says Hennessy. On Thursdays, Shutterbug has a stall at the Beauty Spot in Dakota on Dublin’s South William Street.

It’s difficult to imagine Hennessy taking downtime; she speaks a mile a minute about the plans she and Eoin have for the space and, inevitably, about the difficulty of setting up a business in a time when so many are faltering.

“We work incredibly hard,” she says. “Much of our success is down to the team of people we have around us. I never undervalue their input, they’re just brilliant.

“There are so many things I want to do, but I’m trying to slow down and tackle one thing at a time. I can lose the run of myself.” She also gives her older brother much of the credit. “Eoin’s the unsung hero,” she says. “He works seven days a week. We have to force him to take a holiday.”

See shutterbug.ie