This was a typical who is hot right now in the world of emerging designers and shouldn't have caught my eye at all really - apart from one thing, all the designers featured - were not British. I recently did a piece on Near Fm talking about how our young designers and talented artists are leaving this country to do MA degrees and setting up businesses in London and are not being labelled as Irish talent.
The Grazia article further confirms that I was right. The designers featured were JW Anderson who is Irish and Simona Rocha - yes daughter of John - who was born and raised in Ireland and even has her undergrad from NCAD. The third designer they featured was Dutch!
The reason that Grazia claimed these designers as British was this : JW Anderson and Rocha both exhibited in London Fashion Week and also hold degrees from Central Saint Martins. This seems like a bit of a stretch as both are born and bred Irish and also, J W Anderson notes that he uses a lot of Irish references in his work. So does the fact that they exhibit at London Fashion Week somehow make them English?
Notice how, when McQueen shows in Paris Fashion Week - the brand is not labelled as French but rather has their praises sung for supporting British design abroad and showing the French how its done!
It shouldn't matter, but it just annoyed me because we have such talented young designers and we can't seem to hold onto them as we have a severe lack of funding, a decent fashion week and chances for young designers to make a living here. Irish design lacks the credit it actually deserves. While we have held onto Irish designers such as Peter O' Brien, it seems the only designers who live and survive here are ones which made their brand before the recession. As I mentioned on the radio piece we need the following things :
1- A decent all in it together fashion week where we showcase to the world more then just knitwear pieces. We show all our young designers together, in one place with some serious fashion press backing. It costs money to produce fashion weeks but the money generated from tourism and press actually makes a huge difference. We need international press and not just one photo in the Irish Indo.
2- Decent design MAs which actually attract not just our own students to stay on and study but also attract foreign students as well. We cannot compete with CSM at the moment or London College of Fashion but surely if we were to look at the most popular design courses and try to copy a structure for something here - it might go a long way.
3- Easier access to funding for students to make a living for their brand. The gap between those starting out from college and those who have made a name here is just too great and we need to start making things easier for those who need to establish their names.
It is happening on our high street too. While not wanting to delve into the recent buy outs and hand overs of Irish brands to backers and brands from the UK because we will be here for the next three years, I can mention a recent mislabelling by styleite where they labelled Pennys as an English brand (to do with an article on copyright law) when actually Primark is Irish. The first store opened in Dublin and the headquarters of the brand continue to be in Dublin even though they have expanded into the UK in recent years.
I will post a link to the piece once I have it but I can't be the only person who has noticed this can I? Oh and before anyone accuses me of being one of those Irish people - I'm actually English and this is annoying even me! I think its because I've lived here for so long and so many of my friends have become, are or are studying to be designers here and I just think its a shame that a magazine can't label things properly. It takes five seconds of research to uncover the correct information!!!! GOOGLE PEOPLE GOOGLE!
But I suppose the title : 'Hot New Designers Which Aren't British But We Wish They Were' doesn't have quite the same ring to it......
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