The return of the rural fashion destination

Out-of-town fashion boutiques are winning over discerning customers, who increasingly want clothes they can’t find in city-centre shops or chain stores, explains Marie Kelly.

Once, not too long ago, procuring a reasonably fashionable rig-out did not require visiting a city. Every middling-sized town had its own coterie of drapers and outfitters. Some had their own family-run department store, where you could find good sheets, get fitted for a winter coat and lay your hands on a pair of leather gloves. They were destination stores that drew people to town and just visiting them felt like a treat. Then came the 2000s and overseas chain stores began to take the place of locally owned and run stores. 

The immediate consequence was far fewer places to shop and much less choice, and all the while profits were leaving the country. Less tangibly, though, in market towns where people enjoy community, shopping became a more impersonal, unambiguously transactional experience. For people who might only make a few clothing purchases a year — like much of our parents’ generation — something was lost. Now, though, the trend is swinging back, with locally owned and run fashion retailers popping up all over the country, from JuJu in Greystones, Co Wicklow, and Fabiani in Longford to Macbees in Killarney, Co Kerry. There’s a tangible energy and momentum around regional retail right now that’s transforming how and where we shop. 

Since remote working became normalised and young professionals began escaping the dysfunctional Dublin property market for more affordable lifestyles outside of the capital’s commuter belt in towns and villages around the country, the retail landscape has changed at a pace not imaginable pre-pandemic – four years ago, most of us still looked to the shopping thoroughfares of our major cities to fulfil our sartorial fantasies and find cutting-edge design. Eddie Shanahan, chairperson of the Council of Irish Fashion Designers, predicted there would be a geographical shift. I spoke with him for a magazine article in January 2021 on the future of fashion, and he was adamant that: “The consumer is speaking very clearly right now – they want quality and to buy local.” Research carried out later that year on behalf of the Local Enterprise Offices confirmed his contention, with an enormous 82% of Irish consumers affirming they were now more likely to buy local, be that either online or in-store. 

With Dublin city centre experiencing an image crisis on the back of headlines this summer about serious crime and anti-social behaviour on some of its most popular streets, consumers are less convinced of its glamorous possibilities, preferring instead to browse the safer, and these days more eclectic, avenues of their own local high streets. Plenty of brands are all too keen to avoid exorbitant city centre commercial rents and return to their roots where they can contribute to the prosperity and attractiveness of their own local communities. One such designer is Doireann Healy, founder of lifestyle clothing brand Begley & Bowie. In July 2021, she opened a shop and design studio in Kenmare, the town of her birth and the place of many happy childhood holidays and teenage working summers. “I moved back to live in the town straight after college because I love it here,” she explains. “I had so much support from local people for my online business, I was confident the same support would be there for my retail store too. But when I first opened, the reaction from local people simply blew me away. I received so many gifts, cards and well wishes. That sort of kindness is really uplifting.”

More and more designers these days are committed to a fully sustainable business model, so opening their boutiques locally is a question of ethics as much as anything, with a low-carbon footprint and ‘buy local’ mentality as important to their ethos as eco-friendly fabrics. Designer Aoife Rooney, founder of circular accessories and ready-to-wear brand Aoife, chose to locate Ireland’s first circular fashion boutique, called Conscious Atelier, in the attractive market town of Naas for these very reasons. 

“I was offered a retail space in the Frascati Centre in Blackrock,” Rooney explains, “but that just didn’t feel right. I wanted to strengthen my home county as a fashion hub and create a beautiful retail space on the doorstep of my local community, because not all country people like to go as far as Dublin to shop,” she adds. As a mother of three, Rooney was also realistic about the demands on her time and opening in Naas has allowed her to continue managing the daily juggle of a family of five more easily than had she based herself in Dublin. 

Naas is now a veritable fashion hotspot, with luxury boutiques Emporium Kalu and Gallery 9 already attracting as many discerning shoppers from around the country through its front doors as Dublin’s department stores once did, and retail outlet Kildare Village providing a perfectly located adjunct for families looking to make a day of it.

But Rooney’s Conscious Atelier will bring more to the town than just new fashion labels as the 46-year-old seeks to harness the ‘experience economy’ in an effort to bring a little heart and soul, as well as style and sustainability, to her local high street.

An events calendar planned to support both designers and customers will position the Atelier as a place where shoppers can bump into old friends and make new ones, be that at a wreath-making class, a whiskey-tasting evening, a styling session or a yoga lesson – all of which are planned for the run-up to Christmas. 

The grandiose 2,300-square-metre space with almost 4-metre-high ceilings, which opened to shoppers last month [September], simply wouldn’t have been affordable to Rooney in Dublin city centre. For Healy too, Kenmare provided her with a square footage large enough to create a design studio at the back of her store. Rooney’s Atelier houses 32 Irish and international fashion and accessories brands – some from as far afield as Australia and Mexico – meticulously chosen by Rooney for their circular fashion credentials as well as their contemporary appeal, but only small edits of eight pieces from a selection of those 30-plus brands are on the shop floor at any given time, with a three-week rotation system in place. “The store has been deliberately designed to feel like an exhibition space; somewhere customers can spend time,” explains the 46-year-old. “Each brand has its own bio plaque on the wall, as an artist might in a gallery, explaining its circular philosophy. I want to showcase each of their stories,” explains the former architect and interior designer. There is also an occasion-wear room with a Parisian salon feel – complete with sponge-soft carpet, elegant sofa and generously sized changing room – so that customers have the luxury of time and space to think through important purchases. 

It’s a very deliberate antidote to the cluttered, overstocked, jumble sale-like experiences many high-street chain stores have become and it’s a firm attempt by Rooney to pull the brakes on how fashion is marketed, sold and consumed. Despite a joint statement from the Council of Fashion Designers of America and the British Fashion Council in 2020 calling for brands, designers and retailers to “slow down”, the global fashion picture today feels as frenetic as ever. Resort and mid-season collections continue to put a severe strain on designers’ creativity, contribute to clothing overproduction and escalate the industry’s carbon footprint – in June, Italian superbrand Gucci flew a host of A-listers to the elaborate surroundings of the 14th-century Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul for its cruise collection. Chanel, meanwhile, chose Los Angeles, Dior Mexico City and Carolina Herrera Rio de Janeiro.

Here at home, however, there’s evidence of resistance to the unforgiving pace and environmentally unfriendly perspective of the wider industry. In March this year, the PwC Irish Consumer Insights Pulse Survey was published, revealing that more than 70% of consumers are willing to pay a higher than average price for a product that is produced/sourced locally; made from recycled, sustainable or eco-friendly materials; or produced by a company with a reputation for ethical practices. This has certainly been Healy’s experience. When she first tested out her sustainable sweatshirts (priced at €90) against poorer quality and cheaper alternatives at a local market, her witty take on the uber-cool New York brand Anine Bing’s ‘City Love’ cult-classic sweatshirt sold out while the others were left looking mournful on the stand at the end of the day. 

Rooney’s own award-winning label, which has been hugely successful online – attracting customers from as far afield as Scandinavia, France, Japan and the US – and is now stocked at the Atelier, is based on a production and consumption model that involves rescuing, regeneration, reusing, repairing, sharing and recycling existing materials. Her collections are crafted using deadstock fabric from luxury fashion houses, indigenous Irish materials and ecovera viscose – a material made using sustainable wood from controlled sources. This was the benchmark brands had to reach to be considered for inclusion in Conscious Atelier and each one has been thoroughly researched and vetted by Rooney and her team, their founders interviewed and their sustainable credentials double- and triple-checked, making this boutique more difficult to gain access to than the Chocolate Factory was for Charlie. There’s no Golden Ticket free pass, just an authentic track record of sustainable, ethical and environmentally-friendly processes. 

I read somewhere that ‘good’ designers have careers and see their clothes in stores, while ‘great’ designers change the way people dress. By this standard, Healy and Rooney have proved themselves to be truly great designers, because with every sustainable sweatshirt or regenerated nylon handbag sold in their local high-street stores, they’re changing perspectives as much as wardrobes. Not only that, but they’re breathing life into country towns that once thrived on the bustle of communities who enjoyed staying, and shopping local. Now, decades on, those towns can thrive again.

This article originally appeared in Sunday Independent Life, October 2023