“The 3D pocket is my signature,” says Lauris Brimmers of his debut menswear collection, which has just launched in Indigo & Cloth on Dublin’s Essex Street in Temple Bar. Better known as a barber, his collection, handmade from quality deadstock French fabrics in a bright top-floor studio on nearby Crane Lane, has a streetwear look that is distinctively casual, but well made, with the fastidious attention to detail more associated with made-to-measure tailoring.
It is a fulfilment of a long-held ambition by 39-year-old Brimmers who, since coming to Ireland nearly 20 years ago, has established a reputation for luxury grooming and barbering, but who always wanted to be a fashion designer. Growing up in Latvia near Riga, he loved drawing and making things with his hands but having dropped out of college, decided to come to Kilkenny “with zero English” in 2004, where a childhood friend was living.
He held various jobs before apprenticing as a hairdresser with Kieran O’Gorman, in one of the first salons to acquire a five-star status. “I was working as a stylist having qualified after eight months, but was always pushing myself to learn more, often finishing late at night,” he recalls.
After the recession he started training as a barber, which he describes as one of the oldest professions in the world, learning the craft from an Italian “who was my mentor and taught me the techniques which are so precise, so I merged the hairdressing with barbering. If you cut long hair and make mistakes, you can cover them up (in hairdressing), but with barbering you can’t, so it is much more precise,” he explains.
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Later he moved to Dublin to Grafton Barbers and took a part-time course in fashion design in the Dublin Institute of Design for two years. He moved on to the Butcher Barbers and, in his pursuit of fashion, continued with a part-time course at the Grafton Academy to learn drafting and pattern-making. “Design came naturally to me.”
I make all my own patterns and try not to look at other designers, as my main inspiration is architecture, its shapes and lines – I was always drawing houses as a child
— Lauris Brimmers
Four years ago, the opportunity arose to start a barber shop in Reads of Parliament Street from owner Clem Kenny, who had restored Dublin’s oldest shop. Situated on the ground floor of Crane Lane, it is a small but luxurious and well-laid-out space, with handsome leather barber chairs, “a gentleman’s groomer, for essential masculine maintenance in a relaxing environment”, according to its website. One regular customer describes its attraction as “old world, quiet and private”. Other reviews praise Brimmers’ passion and dedication.
It was during lockdown and a year after the birth of his first child that the menswear collection started to take shape, and was completed last October. Comprising some 15 items, “the whole idea was a combination of one-off pieces. I make all my own patterns and try not to look at other designers, as my main inspiration is architecture, its shapes and lines – I was always drawing houses as a child,” he says.
Capacious and comfortable, deliberately oversized with notably big three-dimensional pockets, the collection has a modern utilitarian but sophisticated look all its own. “It’s all about the details, and although oversize isn’t necessarily for everyone, it can be hard to find fitted jackets, so this shape suits more people,” he says. “I aim to be consistent and continue (for spring/summer) in lighter fabrics, just changing some details. It means I can now offer something extra to my clients: handmade in Ireland in natural, sustainable materials.”
Cutting hair and cutting cloth have one thing in common, he says: “You can see results immediately, and become your own judge and critic.”
Photography: Fionn McCann.
Model: Dan Whelan from NotAnotherInt.
All clothes by Lauris Brimmer at Indigo & Cloth, Essex Street, Dublin.
