Caoimhe Dowling’s men’s wear collection Bedlam makes its debut on Tuesday, January 27th, at Copenhagen Fashion Week following a presentation in Paris. Based in the Danish capital, the talented Irish fashion and textile designer from Listowel in Co Kerry will display her 19 pieces in a 19th-century building, a former slaughterhouse that is now a hip cultural centre in the Vesterbro district of the city.
Made using natural fibres, each piece reflects a commitment to a slow process and material integrity, rooted in research and shaped by tradition. “It’s about a response to a world that often feels unsettled, with the aim of creating clothing in which care, craft and the hand of the maker are felt in every detail,” she says in her manifesto, adding that such pieces that take time and money to create are inherently expensive to purchase.
The collection, drawn from archetypal uniforms, consists of a coat, jackets, waistcoats, shirts, trousers (all with adjustable waists) and handknits produced in collaboration with artisans from Donegal, northern Scotland and the Faroe Islands. “These places and their coastal origins are present in every garment in the texture of the weave and in the rhythm of the making,” she says.
When she talks in detail about the fabrics, it is clear how much effort and expertise has gone into their making – like the long coat in micro-houndstooth tweed handwoven on Victorian pedal looms from an ultrafine yarn, a mix of cashmere, merino and mulberry silk, from Donegal Yarns; shirts made in tea-dyed Japanese seersucker cotton; sweaters in Irish wool (from Ériu) spun and handknitted in Donegal; and ombre linen waistcoats hand-dyed by her with onion skins.
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Since 2020 Dowling has won many awards and accolades for her work, including funding for her knitwear residency earlier this year in the Faroe Islands, the Future Friendly Fashion Award from Aarhus, the Anglo Danish Society Scholarship and Special Jubilee Scholarship, as well as being a design winner of Designbloc in Prague. In June 2023 she was selected as part of a group of cutting-edge sustainable fashion designers for the Pitti Uomo men’s wear show in Florence, where her style was described as merging Irish heritage with Danish design flair.
More recently she won the 2025 fashion award from IDI and a NEMO pilot grant from the Arts Council. Such funding has enabled her to grow her creative practice and build her artisanal brand. Her sustainability credentials are now recognised internationally – she spoke recently in Chile about wool and sustainability.
An LSAD honours graduate with a master’s degree in sustainable fashion and textiles from the Royal Danish Academy, Dowling credits her foundation in an Irish art school followed by a less conceptual grounding in an architectural and design setting in Copenhagen as key to her thinking and artistic approach.
She says working with tweed is like moulding clay, and cites Vivienne Westwood and what she did with Harris tweed as a big influence. She also credits her father, Gerard, an engineer who worked on the looms at Burlington in Tralee, “as probably the most creative one in the family”.
In Bedlam, her mix of classic men’s wear pieces such as blazers, tailored trousers and waistcoats with more daring balloon trousers (becoming her signature) and streetwear items including bomber jackets and hoodies keeps the look fresh, innovative and occasionally rakish. Handmade kilts, hand-dyed Emblem Weavers linen and handloomed tweed with forensic attention to detail make the conventional look unconventional.
Her use of models such as London-based Irish model John Foley (who is also a costume designer and perfumer) and musician Noah Kawekwune (aka Rosiel) from Limerick demonstrates a similarly offbeat approach to casting.
On her website, the approach is encapsulated in messages to herself which include: “accept your irrational ideas; every time you act on your gut instinct, your intuition grows; be a designer with the spirit of an artist; trust yourself”. Inspired by a colloquialism from her native Kerry, she says the ethos of her brand is “this will see me out”.
Prices start at €80 for a woman’s silk top up to €1,500 for a full-length handwoven tweed coat. caoimhedowling.com
