On the Town: It was a night of polka dots, gingham and broderie anglaise in Dublin on Wednesday.
With more than 600 guests at the A|wear spring/summer launch, the city centre’s newly restored Custom House Quay on the Liffey docks, built originally in 1821 as a tobacco and wine warehouse, took on a
whole other life. The building’s central aisle was transformed into a catwalk for highstreet fashion.
Make-up artists, including Natalie Kinsella of MAC at Brown Thomas, with Michelle Regazzoli and Sam Tsan, were all on hand to create faces to suit a range of looks, including the nautical, the global traveller and the buccaneer.
The 1980s are back for sure, said Nicky Shannon, from Castletroy in Limerick, after the show. "It's a great show," added her friend, Maureen Cooney.
Both Elizabeth Hedigan and Nuala Campbell, having been to Rome on a shopping trip recently, viewing designers such as Max Mara and Marina Rinaldi, declared the A|wear styles "excellent" by comparison. "It's tremendous value," said Campbell.
"This is so refreshing for young people," said Hedigan.
"It's more about key pieces and how you would wear them, and putting your own twist on it," explained Annmarie Flood, managing director of A|wear, which has 26 shops, employing 350 people, throughout Ireland.
The nautical look, she said, "would be very big". The fashion now is demi-couture, she added. "It’s really trying to get the customer into tailoring and suits, that more sophisticated, grown-up look, but it has to have an edge."
Aideen McGrath, a first-year student at DCU, with her friends, hairdresser Tracey Morris and student Lisa Cadwell, loved the clothes, especially their "affordability".
"Red is the colour," said Olga Minto, from the A|wear store on Henry Street, wearing a red "Asian Goddess" dress. Her friends, beauticians Sue Dunne and Dolores Rogers, from the Let's Face It Body and Beauty Salon in Artane, were in full agreement.