Born: June 23rd, 1945
Died: November 21st, 2025
Paul Costelloe, who has died at 80 in London after a short illness, was one of Ireland’s most high-profile fashion designers and founder of one of the UK’s most longstanding independent fashion brands. His engaging personality, genial charm, sense of fun and self-deprecation was something most people found hard to resist.
He was best known in the UK for dressing Princess Diana until her death in 1997, as well as the uniforms for British Airways staff – though in a recent interview in this newspaper he claimed the latter as more of a high point as it enabled him to travel by Concorde to Hong Kong, Brazil and Argentina.
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In Ireland for the past 20 years, he built a successful partnership with Dunnes Stores designing collections of homewares, menswear, womenswear and children’s wear, a partnership recently celebrated at his home in Monkstown. Indefatigable to the end, he launched his first bridal collection of 15 dresses called Primavera, inspired by his couture collections, last year. Other collaborations were in the offing.
Part of a generation that succeeded Sybil Connolly, who was the first designer to give Irish fashion an international profile, he established his own label in Dublin as a young designer in 1978, in tandem with manufacturer Robert Eitel of Strelitz in Dungannon.
It made an immediate impact, with its sophisticated tailoring and spectacular use of Irish linen; dresses in Irish teacloth and handkerchief linen made headlines, and the business grew to the point where he had concessions throughout the UK and free-standing stores. It was in one of these stores in Windsor in 1983 where a lady in waiting for Princess Diana saw his work, and so began his long association with Kensington Palace.
His collections and innovative use of Irish tweed and linen combining strict tailoring with more easygoing, elegant pieces and a strong sense of colour continued to mark his style throughout his career. Earlier collections were divided into two identities – one with chic, short and sharp suits, which he once described as “aggressively sexy”; the other, well-cut country classics with an equestrian edge, comfortable and unfussy, was sold under the label Dressage and was less expensive. He described the two ranges as the equivalent of building a Rolls-Royce and a Golf GTI. “Both are very good but totally different.”
Tall, left-handed, a gifted artist and a regular visitor to the Aran Islands, Costelloe continued to sketch constantly throughout his life – and those drawings based on everyday observations informed his collections. Always physically active, he cycled to work every day from his home in Putney to his studio in central London.
Easygoing, low key but disciplined were words used to describe his clothes, which could also accurately describe his personality. Forthright in his opinions, which often generated controversy, he had a healthy disrespect for the rhetoric and hype surrounding the industry, and his candour, charm and lack of pretension made him popular with the British and Irish press.
The youngest of seven children of prosperous raincoat manufacturer, Willie Costelloe – who was the son of a Limerick publican and a member of the old IRA – and Catherine Curran, an American from Manhattan, New York, he grew up in a big house in Booterstown with tennis courts and stables. His stylish mother and four sisters had a huge influence on him.
But he always credited his art teachers at school in Willow Park and Blackrock College for encouraging his artistic side; winning the Caltex Art Competition for under-16s he remembered proudly as another highlight of his life.
The love of textiles was inherited from his father, whom Paul described as a self-made man, industrious and courageous, and who introduced him to the world of business.
Having left school at 16, followed by a period in a pig factory (to toughen him up, according to his father), there was an unsatisfactory stint at the College of Commerce in Rathmines followed by a year at the Grafton Academy studying fashion.
After that he headed off at 18 to Paris, where he eventually found a job with the couturier Jacques Esterel. “Living there for two or three years made me understand what good design was and to be there in that environment at that age (in the 1960s) was great,” he once said. That love of the freedom and spirit of the 1960s remained throughout his life and was often referenced in his collections with their baby doll dresses, balloon sleeves and puffball skirts.
From Paris he moved to Milan, working in the department store La Rinascente where Armani had also trained, followed by a period in New York which he recalled as particularly tough. Memories of the time included working for four years designing lingerie on the 85th floor of the Empire State Building for Larry Sunshine (“no sunshine and very ruthless”), and designing a wedding dress for Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia, before returning to Ireland and establishing his own label.
It was around then that he spotted a young woman called Anne Cooper in Pearse Street train station wearing one of his skirts with high heels and yellow ankle socks. He and his flatmate decided to chat her up and succeeded in taking her to Bewley’s for coffee. They were married a year later two days before Christmas in December 1980, and he recalled “having the car washed before we went into the church”.
He and Anne went on to have seven children, establishing a family home in Putney when the family moved to London in 1999. She remained not only his steadfast and stalwart supporter, but a stylish advertisement for his clothes.
His real break came in London when he was accepted as a member of a select group of British designers called the London Designer Collection and was invited to show in Olympia at the inaugural British Designer Show, precursor of London Fashion Week, telling Vogue that he had wanted to be the Irish Ralph Lauren.
Costelloe has presented collections in London for the past 40 years, most recently in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria in Aldwych where his show, always the first at 9am, marked the start of fashion week.
These collections are now couture (ie, made to measure) rather than ready to wear – a way of keeping up consumer brand awareness outside the UK and Ireland “so it’s like an art gallery and not a collection”, he has said. “It keeps the name international, so it is worthwhile as we sell a lot online, handbags and other accessories, and that is growing.”
It also showed his versatility and masterly ability to produce best-selling commercial collections as well as those more freewheeling and spirited in design. “I’m too adventurous now,” he told this newspaper earlier this year.
These recent collections often referenced Ireland – including one dedicated to Dublin and Joyce’s Ulysses, with Sinéad O’Connor singing her sean-nós rendition of Molly Malone. In another, all six of his sons, then aged 16-28, modelled a series of suits. After one show some years ago, writer Edna O’Brien said she coveted every single coat and cardigan.
His last collection for winter 2025, shown in London last year, was presented in Dublin’s City Hall in September, though he was unable to attend due to illness.
He is survived by his wife Anne and sons Robert, Gavin, Justin, Paul Emmet, William, Nicholas and daughter Jessica. Like his father, William is a gifted artist who trained at the Chelsea School of Art and is now design director of the company, while Jessica, a trained opera singer, is marketing director. Under their stewardship, their father’s name and legacy is sure to continue.
