Despite this country's reputation for imagination and innovation, Irish fashion tends towards the conservative. The consumer appears loathe to take risks, and so too, therefore, does the designer. Many Irish women in 1998 still dress as they did a decade ago, with broad-shouldered jackets and above-the-knee skirts the most popular choice even though neither item has been "fashionable" for at least five years.
Full-length shift dresses and square-heeled shoes are two other examples of the essentially static nature of the average Irish wardrobe. The familiar remains in favour.
The avant-garde, even the moderately adventurous, tends to be shunned. Understandably, therefore, designer Sharon Wauchob does not expect she will attract a large and immediate following in Ireland. Born in Co Tyrone, Wauchob's clothes show no obvious "Irish" influences either traditional or contemporary. Natural fibres such as linen are not used, nor are long-established designs or patterns.
Her favourite designer is the Belgian Martin Margiela whose work is hardly known in Ireland and not available here. She also admires Commes des Garcons and Yohji Yamamoto, both Japanese labels with a very limited Irish following. Now aged 27, Sharon Wauchob has lived in Paris for the past four and a half years, moving there a year after graduating in fashion from Central St Martin's in London. The day after qualifying, she was telephoned by Koji Tatsuno - another cult Japanese designer - who offered her a job.
She took it and stayed with the company until last year, when a position became available with Louis Vuitton. This long-established French accessories company has recently hired American Marc Jacobs to produce a clothing line, but Wauchob is employed by the business "to work on concepts basically; the whole evolution of accessories into the future".
More importantly, earlier this year during the Paris collections, she presented a first collection under her own name. A lot of designers show work over a very short space of time and only a relatively small number of them receive much attention. Sharon Wauchob managed to garner a respectable amount of press coverage for a debutante; both American and French Vogue have picked up on her designs, along with The Face, Dazed and Confused, I.D. and this newspaper. Collette, currently the most fashionable of all fashion outlets in Paris, will be carrying her line later in the year and a number of Japanese buyers have also placed orders.
Wauchob is, indisputably, a name to watch in the future. Curiously, when younger she considered taking over the family farm before an interest in art and drawing came to the fore. By moving to London and then Paris, she has broadened her perspective more than many other Irish designers and this process has been enhanced by contact with Tatsuno, whose own work reflects a preoccupation with new fabrics and shapes.
"It was really good to learn how to see things from a different perspective and open up," she says of her time with the Japanese designer. "I learnt to read colour in a way totally different to our own. The Japanese are much more confident of colour; I think it has to do with their light." "Now I don't restrict myself so much as I used to. I still keep a firm grip on what I want, but I can challenge that myself.
Being in Paris has made me more open to real quality and real couture finish. That's something now evident in my clothes." Those clothes show definite affinities to Belgium and Japan in their fondness for gathering, wrapping and folding, together with the juxtaposition of contrasting fabrics. Established cutting and tailoring impose no restraints on Wauchob, although quite clearly she is perfectly capable of producing a shapely jacket when it suits.
However, her interest lies in taking the customary form and then playing with the diverse elements in a post-deconstructionist manner. The results bare evidence of their origins sometimes only in the most oblique way.
Similarly, Wauchob likes to mix materials together. "I quite like taking fabrics out of context, like making a silk chiffon jacket which gives a hint of surprise. And I'd rather hide some elements, for example mohair peeking through chiffon." These are never going to be clothes with mass appeal and Wauchob is not looking to capture the general market.
"I admit they're definitely for someone with more than usual confidence, but I don't see a specific age bracket. A lot is to do with luxury because of the materials and finish. It's luxury and contemporary, I hope. A lot of the time luxury has been associated with haute couture, which for me is really contrived and about women manipulated into clothes. I think the feeling at the moment is away from contrivance." Wauchob will be showing her second collection in Paris next October.
She says her first was "just an introduction that I'd been thinking about for some time. The next one is going to be more concise and, I hope, clearer." Wauchob's statement of intent is already clear and while she insists she has no desire to dictate how other women should dress, "I'm definitely not into the power-driven image.
For me, clothes are to do with ease of wearing and functionality." While she would like to see her designs available in Ireland, at the moment no retailer here has spotted Sharon Wauchob's work. No one is carrying Dubliner Daryl Kerrigan's labels either, even though she is now a major star in the United States. Perhaps, therefore, Wauchob should just get used to the concept of a prophet being neglected in her own home?