“He paused, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers. Cascades of ribbons. Gleaming silks, petticoats on slim brass rails, rays of flat silk stockings.” In Ulysses, Dublin’s great department store was immortalised with all its feminine allure and aspiration by James Joyce describing Leopold Bloom gazing into its windows on June 16th, 1904, full of sensuous longings and thoughts of Molly.
This year marks the 175th anniversary of the store’s foundation in Grafton Street by two drapers, Hugh Brown and James Thomas, at one of the most troubled times in Irish history.
Many years later under the ownership of the cultured and progressive McGuire family, who took over in 1933, it developed a reputation for elegance, luxury and sophistication that remains to this day. They understood early on the importance of window displays to attract attention, commissioning the artist Norah McGuinness, whose stage sets literally stopped the traffic.
When the store was acquired by the young Canadian Galen Weston in 1971, he made his wife, the top model Hilary Frayne, a director. Young, glamorous, forward thinking and international in outlook, the couple reflected broader changes in Irish life during the upheavals in the 1970s and set about updating and creating a stylish luxury store.
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Today Brown Thomas maintains those ideals and, being a big part of the very identity of Grafton Street, where it has a dominant presence, continues to offer an international perspective to its customers via top global brands including Dior, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Chanel, Gucci, Prada and Loewe.
Its main doors open to a comprehensive, bright and stylish ground-floor arrangement that is home to perfume, skincare and cosmetics counters, Charlotte Tilbury, Mac, Jo Malone, Frederic Malle and Chanel among them, while its nearby Planet Beauty store boasts the hottest niche brands. The luxury footwear department has shoes for any occasion, stocking the latest lines in sandals, boots and trainers by designers from Christian Louboutin and Jimmy Choo to Carvela and LK Bennett, plus Nike and Adidas. Elsewhere in the store are the best names in men’s wear, homeware and kitchenware.
Brown Thomas remains a special, unique Dublin destination. Hilary O’Kelly, dress historian and NCAD lecturer says it is “one of the few places in the city centre where we can see ambitious fashion with real creativity, real fabrics in wool, silk, cotton – and no plastic – with good cutting and draping”. Browsing, shoppers “can feel as if we were walking through a magazine”, she adds.
“It has always been the apotheosis of a department store, with its crystal, its perfume and its service, and real, creative fashion,” says O’Kelly.
Her views are echoed by Edmund Shanahan, a retail analyst of long standing who argues that “every capital city needs an iconic store that presents the best indigenous creativity alongside the best international design”.
For Stephanie Rains, an associate professor of media studies of Maynooth University who has written about Irish consumer culture and the history of Dublin department stores, Brown Thomas “remains one of the flagship shops of the city centre, by far the largest and best-known businesses which still structure the rest of the retail landscape”.
“The geography of the consumer culture in the city has remained amazingly stable over the 175 years of Brown Thomas’s history, with Grafton Street on the south side and Henry Street on the north side and Brown Thomas’s continuous presence on Grafton Street is one of the main reasons for that”, says Rains.
One of the more notable achievements in the past decade has been Create, the annual fashion showcase opening the door to Irish talent across ready-to-wear and accessories.
Having made its debut in 2010, at a time when Ireland was just coming out of recession, it has now taken on a life of its own and is a regular fixture on the Irish fashion calendar. Over the years those featured have included JW Anderson (recently named as one of Time magazine’s Most Influential People of 2024), Richard Malone, Richard Quinn, Una Burke, Lainey Keogh, The Tweed Project and many other now established names, alongside a Sybil Connolly retrospective in 2013.
The Designers to Watch, a liaison between Brown Thomas and NCAD since 2014, has also been instrumental in uncovering and celebrating emerging home-grown talent in student fashion graduates.
Twice a year the spring and winter season shows from Brown Thomas are highlights of the Dublin fashion scene, usually taking place in exciting or unusual venues and presenting key pieces from Milan, Paris, London and New York in dramatic catwalk installations. The most recent was staged in the spectacular Exo building in Dublin’s North Docks, the highest office building in the city, with 360-degree panoramic views of the city. This 2024 spring show, with its classic tailoring and more daring statements, infused with a feeling of nostalgia for the 1990s also lived up to expectations.
As Brown Thomas faces into the future, lessons can be learned from the past. It has survived because it has adapted to change over the past century, reflecting a fluctuating economy and an unpredictable retail and social climate. It has embraced online with a comprehensive and lively ecommerce site and, according to Brown Thomas Arnotts chief executive Donald McDonald, digital is now trading at three times the level it was at in 2019.
The store offers a personal shopping experience and a concierge service, and its window displays at Christmas – among the biggest in the city and hand dressed by the store’s creative team – enliven all of Grafton Street. The necessity to offer excitement, experience and desire remain imperative for Brown Thomas to maintain its relevance and meaning for Dubliners and visitors alike to both its city and online sites.
But whatever the time of year, its windows, filled with creativity and possibility, should continue to make heads turn and passersby stop in their tracks, just as they did to Leopold Bloom more than 100 years ago.
