Pushing boundaries

White leather wedding dresses, cutting-edge materials and crystal-studded creations – adventurous designer Joanne Hynes continues to evolve her style, writes DEIRDRE McQUILLAN

THE WAY JOANNE HYNES dresses at any time is usually a guide to her current thinking about fashion, and she never looks the same. When we met, the designer, who won the “Irish Tatler” award last year for her contribution to Irish fashion, sported a sharp black Helmut Lang jacket, black looped skirt with silver knee-high socks, strappy rubber Vivienne Westwood shoes, and a leopard-print band wound around her blonde hair. Determined modernity with a dash of irreverence is typical of her style, and her spring collection sees her particular signature evolve in interesting ways. There’s a weather eye on the street and some ever-present telling detail. She styled this shoot herself.

In what is predominantly a dress collection, colours are strong and bright, prints and fabrics varied, and the use of ornamentation, particularly crystal, makes a bold impact on many of the dresses. Some silhouettes are familiar from previous collections, such as the “waist-pincher” dress that puffs fabric out above and below the torso, but they have been refreshed with modern reflective fabrics.

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Black Zadkiel strapless dress, corseted with peek-a-boo crystal stone inner, with leather snake-print belt (€395)

Her collections evolve naturally, she says, and Hynes keeps separate sketch books – for tweed, for dresses, and for every product line – in which she keeps ideas and drawings. “I don’t believe in it being precious – fashion is so contrived and you are expected to do drawings of ladies in frocks. I was always more analytical in my approach. I don’t strive for perfection. There is always a story behind each dress.”

Each one of the group is called after a stone such as tiger’s eye, or based on crystals, such as the stand-out Sandalphon dress, a structured steel silk number, heavily decorated with star-burst “robotic crystals”. There’s one called the Chruscolla Snake, in snake-printed taffeta with chunky rhinestones and a metal-chain neckline. “I am very superstitious and have a fascination for crystals. I’ve always used crystal and always go back to it. It’s a challenge for the mass market, but [the dress] can’t be copied,” she says.

Surprise touches include a daffodil yellow ruched dress in silk chiffon with a bold metal and glass brooch, a pink silk dress with matching jacket and an off-white leather panel dress with zip front and zip seams, a new take on leather (and, she suggests, a new kind of wedding dress), which she introduced for winter. All fabrics are Italian, and though much of her time is spent in India – “I don’t really draw from India except for colour. I don’t really think like a fashion designer. I am more into making and creating because it is what I have to do.”

This is a collection in which each dress, whether in neon yellow silk or in silk organza tribal print, has its own personality. “I think what I am doing is very strong. People tend to be very regimented in the way they dress and I am pushing them on a little further, but there’s a lot more I want to do.”