Meet Ilk, the new eye-catching Irish menswear brand

Creativity often blossoms in trauma. With the fashion industry floundering, supply chains disrupted, and small businesses faltering or collapsing, it might not necessarily be the optimum time to start something new. But Ilk, a new Irish ready-to-wear menswear brand, has high hopes for its trans-seasonal and adaptable workwear pieces. Their fabrics and design are full of the kind of eye-catching detail that sets a menswear line apart.

The people behind Ilk are an unusual Irish trio: a very gifted young fashion designer, a GAA star and a former graffiti artist turned owner of a multidisciplinary design studio. All working together collaboratively.

Galway designer Siranee Caulfield-Sriklad of Irish/Asian heritage (her father Thai, her mother Irish) maintains that her style has always been influenced by the men in her life and Ilk’s concept of family, tribe and community chimes with her own ideas.

Her grandfather, she says, wore suits handmade by her great-grandfather, a tailor in Kilkelly, Mayo and Caulfield-Sriklad and her brothers share their clothes, so a gender-neutral approach has informed her work and this collection.

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Two years ago, graduating from NCAD, her collection called An Imagined Community 66353 made a big impact when she meshed Thai silk with Irish wool on tweed, reflecting her dual identities.

Since then she has worked with two London studios, the innovative female-run fashion and furniture company called TooGood and Roberts/Wood, a brand committed to sustainable artisanal production as well as a stint with Ireland’s Eye knitwear.

“What’s special about Ilk is the concept behind it which is inclusive and global – and concept is everything to me, clothing that has a meaning,” she says. Her challenge was to bring the collective vision of the group to life, drawing inspiration for the collection’s feeling and colour from Samuel Beckett, Eileen Gray and Sean Scully using Japanese fabrics that “lend themselves better to certain silhouettes”, she explains. “It is a collaborative process.”

Managing director of Ilk is Killian Walsh, a graduate in Visual Communications from DIT and owner of the Grandson design studio in Dundalk; co-founder is Jamie Clarke who has a marketing background fostered in Paris, New York and London whose ambition was always to start a clothing brand. He is also a distinguished athlete – a star with the Armagh senior football team for many years and a multiple club All-Ireland winner with Crossmaglen Rangers.

Walsh explains the rationale behind the brand. “It is made up of adaptable pieces that can be layered to create different outfits and looks with fabrics that include a high-density water-repellent cotton worn by the Japanese military and another Japanese check fabric called Miwa – a blend of wool, cotton and linen used for shirts and called after our Japanese supplier”.

Even the buttons are special – hand engraved in Poland from mother of pearl, while the clothes are made in family-run factories in Portugal that have been carefully selected to conform to Ilk’s philosophy and values.

The debut collection is minimal, simple, utilitarian, but well thought out. Six sweatshirts, three T-shirts, the Miwa shirt in three variants, Oxford shirts, jackets, Porto pants in mix and match colours. Shirts come with matching face masks, so no fabric is wasted. Prices start at €70 for two pack tees, €90 for sweatshirts, €125 for cotton drill pants and €210 for jackets.

Ilk is sold online and in selected indigenous stores like Indigo & Cloth in Dublin and McDonnells Menswear Dundalk.

“We want retailers that share our values and value the quality and details behind the clothing” says Walsh, who is proud that an Irish company can sit in Indigo & Cloth alongside brands like Oliver Spencer (UK) and A Kind of Guise (Germany) committed to high standards of production “and hold our own in terms of quality and design”.