Clothes lines

Compiled by DEIRDRE McQUILLAN

Wear your art

Tempy Osborne, who travelled with her family from her home in west Cork to spend a year in the frozen north of Canada at the age of five, says the experience changed her life. While studying fine art, she became interested in small, portable art pieces like those of the Inuit in the Arctic Circle (where her family have settled) and traditional Japanese inro cases for holding small objects, before starting to make her own. Since graduating from the National College of Art Design, she has turned her artwork into jewellery, working on wearable surfaces such as wooden bracelets and mother-of-pearl earrings (above). Each painting and drawing is prepared, painted and finished as a fine-art piece and prices start from €25 for one of an edition of three, to €95 for a one-off image. They are available from paintbox.moonfruit.com.

Something for the weekend

MaxMara has just launched its first Weekend by MaxMara flagship in Britain and Ireland, in Lisburn Road in Belfast, a coup for Northern Ireland. MaxMara is one of the biggest women’s ready-to-wear companies in the world, with more than 2,250 stores worldwide. This year marks the 60th birthday of the brand, which is indelibly associated with impeccably made coats for sophisticated women.

Looks like leather . . .

For inexpensive accessories that look more than the sum of their price tags, Warehouse is the place to look, especially for leather bags and belts. This colour block clutch, for instance (€42), is typical of current offerings, and the company also does a great everyday bucket bag for €47 in what it calls “composite” leather, which if not fully the real thing, certainly is convincing. See warehouse.co.uk.

Jeans and more

Susan Wylie from Belfast came to Dublin recently showing the latest jeans collection from the hip London brand MIH (it’s short for Made in Heaven) and it was hard not to be impressed. Good tailoring and washes, terrific reworking of classics (one in pure cotton denim) and all sorts of cuts from which to choose – all at around €200. MIH designer Chloe Lonsdale revamped the company five years ago and it now includes some flattering cape shirts, cute print dresses and reversible shearlings, as well as the jeans. It’s available at BT2. See MiH-jeans.com.