He will be 80 in June but veteran Irish fashion designer Paul Costelloe shows no sign of slowing down. He continues to show at London Fashion Week, which he has done for the past 40 years as well as designing homewares, womenswear and menswear lines for Dunnes Stores.
Last September, he launched his first bridal collection called Primavera, 15 dresses inspired by his couture collection. He also has a rake of profitable licenses including a jewellery and accessories collection for the American QVC shopping channel.
We meet at his Monkstown home, bought in 1984, a beautiful Regency building which, after he moved to London in 1999, was rented to a French family. Adjoining it is a converted coach house where his mother-in-law resided until recently. On this brief visit to Dublin, he is staying there with his wife Anne (who is recovering from a stroke in November) and their son William, design director of the company, a gifted artist who trained at the Chelsea School of Art.
Dressed casually in a blue hoodie and jeans, Costelloe reflects on his early career over coffee in the kitchen, recalling his first fashion presentation in London in the early 1980s, with Northern Irish financial support, at the Hyde Park Hotel, along with John Rocha. “I was worried about making money because I had children. A journalist told me I needed to be more adventurous, and I remember feeling I was not as adventurous as I should have been. Now I am too adventurous,” he grins.
Having trained in the Grafton Academy and worked in Paris with fashion designer Jacques Esterel, followed by two years in Milan with Rinascente and four in New York, he was invited to show at the inaugural British Designer Show (precursor of London Fashion Week) in Olympia in 1984. He told Vogue that he had wanted to be the Irish Ralph Lauren.
Recalling that period, he mentions Katherine Hamnett’s famous anti-nuclear T-shirt worn to 10 Downing Street to meet Margaret Thatcher that year.
“Fashion made statements then,” he says admiringly. “Now, it is just dictated by a couple of brands mostly in Italy and France and we follow on their coat tails, so it is an uneven field – to get recognised you either have to be 18 or a millionaire. Being a boring middle-class father of seven is not the most exciting prospect, which I am happy with, but maybe pride drives me on.”
Youngest of a family of seven himself, he attributes the trait of pride to his late father, from whom he also inherited a love of textiles. “He was an industrious, courageous manufacturer in Dublin, a self-made man from Limerick with a glamorous American trophy wife from New York. Having American culture and Irish culture in those days was very extreme, but it produced plenty of interesting people though maybe not the happiest,” he concedes.
Cosmetics and perfume is where the money is. I have tried that, but without success, so it keeps me humble. You are always prepared for the downside.
The high points of his long career, he says, are easy to remember and he does not include, somewhat surprisingly, being the personal designer for Princess Diana, with whom he has always been associated.
He lists them as follows: “winning the Caltex Art Competition for under 16s when I became something of a hero in Blackrock College for maybe a day or two. Designing the British Airways uniforms and travelling by Concorde to Hong Kong, Brazil and Argentina. The collaboration with Wedgwood on ceramics and porcelain in the north of England. Getting married two days before Christmas and having the car washed before we went into the church”.
The Wedgwood tableware sold well in the US but not in Japan, so it was a disappointment. “I think big and I design big, but I didn’t consider the Japanese market so it slumped there,” he says.
He also has memories of working in New York for four years designing lingerie for Larry Sunshine (“no sunshine and very ruthless”) on the 85th floor of the Empire State Building and designing a wedding dress for Tricia Nixon (Richard Nixon’s daughter) in 1971.
Back in Ireland, he launched his first collection in 1978, remembered for its spectacular and tailored use of Irish linen from Strelitz and Moygashel in Northern Ireland and building the business to the point where he had concessions throughout the UK and free-standing stores.
It was in one of these, in Windsor, where a lady in waiting for Princess Di first saw his work in 1983, opening the door to Kensington Palace. “Linen is my birthright for some reason,” he says of his regular use of the fabric.
His first runway show in London a year later called Witness, based on the Harrison Ford Amish movie, featured those romantic linen dresses.
A collaboration this year will bring that focus on linen full circle, but he is reluctant to divulge details. “As a designer I always looked for collaborations which are now quite common, but in those early days designers had to survive on their own merits. I prefer to use other people’s money to exploit my creativity. I always see financial advantage over good taste and that is how I have managed to give my children a decent education. It is about compromise and for a designer that’s not the best,” he says with a shrug.
Which brings us to his long association with Dunnes and he is predictably enthusiastic, describing it as “an amazing company”. He explains how it started 15 years ago after Debenhams had launched a “Designers at Debenhams” brand introducing Jasper Conran and John Rocha.
“I hadn’t been approached, so I contacted Margaret Heffernan and we met up and agreed to collaborate on homewares, which is still the foundation of the Paul Costelloe brand. I deal with Margaret directly – we have regular conversations and meet for coffee in the Herbert Park Hotel. I have a lot of respect for her and her daughter Ann (Heffernan), a doctor who looks after food and niece Sharon [McMahon], who is head of textiles.”
He deals with and travels with Dunnes’ buyers.
“My son William is just back from China and Hong Kong, where the [Dunnes] buyers wrangled the best products at the best prices. We go to India in the spring. We started womenswear in 2011 on the success of the homewares – menswear was slow to start because, typical males, they don’t move. Men are consistent – boringly so at times – but once you win them over, they really get enthusiastic, and I find that a lot more fun than women who say ‘why are you not making in my size?’”
Men’s wear, now in its 10th year, is stocked in 50 stores across the country and he gets accurate sales figures on a monthly basis on each collection.
Though Dunnes does not publish accounts, Costelloe’s design management company has been posting profits since 2016, a year after his association with Ireland’s retail giant, though the latest accounts, to the end of August 2023, show a loss of €152,055 in 2023, down from a profit in 2022 of €511,410, a bumper year for the company.
The loss trimmed accumulated profits at Paul Costelloe Design Management Ltd from €2.2 million to just over €2 million, according to a report in The Irish Times in June. He pays tribute to his financial director Gerry Mescal (a distant relative of the actor Paul), whom he dubs “Mr Cautious” and who has “looked after us for 40 years”.
Costelloe’s advice to aspiring young fashion designers is always to have a good accountant.
The catwalk shows have changed in their purpose since he first showed at London Fashion Week. “Before, the catwalk was the commercial vendor of the brand, so it was important that people buy into it. Now, it is a couture collection of one-off pieces which keeps up consumer brand awareness outside the UK and Ireland because [the show] gets covered all over the world, so it’s like an art gallery and not a collection.
“People will say we saw your show on the TV in Hong Kong. It keeps it international, so it is worthwhile as we sell a lot online – handbags and other accessories, and that is growing.”
Runway shows are expensive to stage – the last two in London cost €500,000. “That’s compared to the Italian shows, which cost a couple of a million each. But they have cosmetics and perfume and that is where the money is. I have tried that, but without success, so it keeps me humble. You are always prepared for the downside.”
Free from the imperative commercial constraints of his first shows and for the high-street market, his London fashion collections are more spirited, flamboyant and colourful with that mix of tailoring and what the French call flou very much his signature.
Left-handed, he continues to draw and paint and is physically active, with a 50-minute cycle to work every day from his home in Putney to his studio in central London. He plays tennis at weekends when he can. His sons are very supportive, and he works closely with William and loves going with him to Milan to select fabrics at the Milano Unica trade show. They are currently collaborating on a revamped revival of his brand Dressage launched in Brown Thomas in 1988. He retains clothing rights to the name.
“Creativity and integrity will always win out and you take on board your past in your designs and we have done a lot over the years, but you don’t look back, we don’t indulge in the past. I look at everything, what people are wearing, what plates, shapes of mugs – you can do so much more with a creative brain,” he says.
Painting is easier, he says. “You can sit on a wall and paint the landscape, but to design you must have discipline and know who is going to make your toile [test garment]. Sometimes my lovely drawings get lost in translation. We are hands on, it’s like farming, we work and feel with our hands.”
On February 20th, he will once again open London Fashion Week at 9am, which he has been doing for the past 15 years, most recently in the ballroom of the Waldorf Hilton. But “it’s a poisoned chalice” he says with a wry grin.
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CV
Name: Paul Costelloe
Age: 80 in June
Lives: Putney, southwest London.
Family: wife Anne, sons Robert, Gavin, Justin, Paul Emmet, William, Nicholas, daughter Jessica
Hobbies; Painting, cinema. His favourite movie is The Big Country
Something we might expect: Loves Italian food and cooking
Something that might surprise: He is a proud collector of T-shirts that he wears sporting slogans such as Hidden Tiger, Old Guys Rule, Lovely Day for a Guinness
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