I think this is what you call aspirational journalism. Ireland's most promising young fashion designer, 29-year-old Marc O'Neill, is holding a beautiful, gauzy plum-coloured skirt up against my hips. He looks enthusiastic. "What size are you? A nine? Try it on". But only I know the truth about what is hiding under my worn cotton trousers. "Erm . . . well, actually, no thanks. My legs are a bit hairy."
He looks at me blankly. This NCAD graduate, whose designs are regularly draped around Andrea Corr and Madonna, has just finished a lucrative five-year contract designing a range under his own name for high street chain, A-Wear, and is about to launch his new international collection at a high-profile outdoor fashion show in Temple Bar this week. Never before has a pair of hairy legs come crashing through his designer dreams. He laughs. "Well, you'll be looking at the skirt really, not the legs."
In fact, Marc's designs do suggest a wearer with good legs: a confident, chic urban chick. "I like to think that my clothes are mainly worn by..." he pauses. "Self-assured, independent, fashion-conscious females. People who very much have their own sense of style."
An early and very clear picture of who his wearer is has differentiated Marc from the other hungry fashion graduates who pour out of NCAD every year. In his five years with A-Wear, at least 300,000 items of clothing with his name sewn inside flew off the rails. Marc himself combines a sensible but ambitious business head with the intangible gift of transforming an idea of coolness into a product that you can buy.
"My job," he says crisply, "is to maintain a profile, be good at what I do, design continuously, and keep thinking." He eventually wants to be in a position to license his designer name, much in the same way as Calvin Klein or John Rocha, putting his name to underwear, sunglasses, fragrance, glassware, jewellery. His decision to leave A-Wear behind, and pursue a smaller, more exclusive market is largely a commercial one. Cashing in on the high street end of fashion, he maintains, means a slower and more uncertain route to the top. Debenhams asked him to design a collection two years ago, in the middle of his A-Wear contract, an impressive invitation for a 27year-old, but he declined. "I figured if I did that in the UK, before I'd built up my name, I'd end up staying as that."
O'Neill learned a lot from his family. His grandfather, a senator, owned a drapery shop on Dublin's Wexford Street, while his grandmother was painted, wearing her favourite handpainted Spanish silk scarf, by Louis le Brocquy. He got his first sewing machine at 17. When I ask him what he would do for a living if, for some reason, he had to give up designing, he is totally flummoxed. "I'd be a ceramicist." No, I insist, something that has nothing to do with designing, something that most people do; an office job. "That's very hard. I've never thought about doing anything that I personally would regard as being . . . somewhat banal."
Through the window of his top-floor Stephen's Green studio, I can see office workers making their way back to their offices, unaware - or uncaring - that they might be banal. Still, his comments about not being able to imagine doing a "banal" job seem totally innocent. He is unpretentious about what he does, and is just incredibly happy doing it. He doesn't even look like a fashion designer - his shirt is plain, buttoned down, his voice is quiet. He definitely doesn't wear his talents on the outside, preferring, I think, to save his creativity for his clothes - for the tiny details of embroidery on his skirts, the proud funnel-shaped necks on his cherry-coloured coats, the bold colours and shapes of his dresses.
He often gets ideas from the people he hangs out with, and although he says that he is less inspired by Dublin streets than by the winding alleys of Brick Lane in London, or the Marais district in Paris, he does look at people, and the shape of what they are wearing, all the time.
"Some old man might walk past you in the street, wearing a really old duffle coat, and part of the coat might be worn away, and you'll suddenly think: `Wouldn't it be great to do a corrosive print?' Or you might see a pocket on someone that's been twisted in some way, just by accident, but it might inspire you for a detail."
He emphasises again the point about the wearer of his clothes, and how he perceives her. "It's just nice to think that the people who are wearing your clothes really do have their own sense of style, that they aren't necessarily just buying your stuff."
Fans of Marc O`Neill do tend to wear his clothes in a very distinctive fashion. They might take a very chic Marc O'Neill skirt, and put it with a tiny, vintage cashmere cardigan and a pair of ancient trainers, or one of his fitted sweaters will be layered over very old jeans. The whole effect is thrown together, very chic - and very individual.
He decisively says "no" to the question of whether he ever worries that he'll run out of ideas. During our interview, he says, he has thought of three things he wants to change for the show on Thursday. His ideal model is French actress Sophie Marceau. "I think she's incredible." He reads fashion biographies and histories regularly and is an admirer of creative genius. His favourite designer is Elsa Schiapparelli.
He considers this week's show to be a big chance for people to see what he's planning for the future. "I'm inviting a lot of independent Irish shop owners to see the show. This time I'm saying, `these are the clothes I create. I really hope you like them'."
www.marconeill.com
