TWICE annually, over the space of several weeks, this page carries extensive reports on the international collections shown in London, Paris, Milan and New York. As these features demonstrate, fashion is a global business with an international following the clothing industry is reckoned to be one of the six biggest in the world. Look at the labels inside your clothing: they may carry the name of an Irish or Italian designer, but their country of manufacture could very well be Hong Kong or the Philippines. Thanks to advances in telecommunications, images of the very latest styles can be transmitted thousands of miles within minutes of the clothes first being shown. At the moment, favourite houses such as Prada and Gucci, although based in Milan, are influencing how women and men will dress right around the planet.
Under such circumstances, is it possible for the people of any country to lay claim to a distinct style - any more than it's feasible in the late 20th century for a nation to maintain an indigenous cuisine untouched by outside influences? The most homogeneous dress style at the moment derives from the United States: its casual and democratic approach to clothing is as likely to be seen on the streets of Galway as New York. In matters of style, few countries have been able to resist succumbing to American culture, so damaging their own indigenous dress sense.
Ireland has been no more immune to this trend than anywhere else in Europe, even as its own designers have won increasing acclaim both at home and abroad. While obviously detrimental in some respects, the internationalisation of fashion has been beneficial to Irish designers, giving them access to markets and media overseas. Names such as Lainey Keogh, John Rocha and Paul Costelloe are well known outside this island precisely because their work has global appeal.
But this recent success, although considerable, is relative. While Irish fashion may appear to have acquired a high profile, compared to that of other countries it is almost invisible. Typically, a newly published guide to fashion written by Caryn Franklin of BBC television's The Clothes Show makes no mention of this country, devoting generous space to the usual, well established centres of style. The novelty of Ireland's presence on the world fashion circuit means we have still to make an indelible mark. Countries such as France and Italy have a much longer history in this field, resulting not just in more firmly established industries but also greater reputations.
Ireland, on the other hand, until the second half of the present century would not have been reckoned to have its own distinct style in the area of fashion. Until the 16th century, the inhabitants of this country had their own costume, of which the most famous element was a large cloak or mantle. Exported throughout Europe, this was the last part of Irish dress to survive after the Elizabethan conquests. By 1620, Luke Gernon could write of Irishmen: "The better sort are apparelled at all points like the English only they retain their mantle."
Unlike the Scots, who held onto their traditional clothing (admittedly reinterpreted - by Sir Walter Scott in the early 19th century), the Irish soon lost even their mantle, in part due to trade restrictions imposed on the indigenous industry by London governments. As a rule, the occupants of this country dressed no differently from their neighbours across the Irish Sea. Visitors here, while they might occasionally speak of Irish women's fine skin colouring or red hair, almost never mention their dress. When Thackeray travelled through Ireland in 1842, only in Connemara did he note such distinctive styles as red petticoats and heavy knitted socks. At the end of the same decade, Queen Victoria wrote to her uncle from Dublin that the women were very handsome, but otherwise little about their appearance seems to have caught her attention.
Only in the aftermath of the Emergency did the notion of Ireland as a centre of style begin to emerge. The 1950s was the first decade in which Irish fashion acquired its own character thanks to the work of pioneering designers. By using Irish fabrics and updating old forms preserved in the west of Ireland, they created a style which was unique to this country and came to be internationally identified as Irish. The kind of clothes they designed, employing natural fibres such as linen and wool, are still regarded as being archetypally Irish. Outside of this country, therefore, Irish style is not seen to have changed much in the past half century. Is this the reality, or do we now have a different style of dressing which, while reflecting the past is nonetheless informed by the present?