Did you ever get so much wear from your summer wardrobe? Eoin Lyons finds out what looks have been hot on the streets

It has been a long, hot summer - at least for those of us more used to short, wet summers - with plenty of opportunities for looking good around town. We asked a selection of image-conscious Dubliners how they'd made their mark on the streets this year.

Argentinian PR Patricia O'Shea bought her black, white and red dress in Wild Child, a vintage clothing store on South Great George's Street, because "it has the kind of 1950s femininity that you see in old Fellini movies". Her sunglasses, shoes and bag were picked up in Buenos Aires. O'Shea says there is a big difference between Irish and Argentinian style. "Argentinians are quite vain and image-conscious, and even though they can look quite formal they have more fun with their clothes than the Irish. You see so many people here copying pop stars' looks."

O'Shea avoids anything too trendy but will buy cheap "of the moment" clothes from Top Shop to contrast with her vintage gear. More money goes into shoes than clothes, but when she splurges O'Shea does so on long-lasting items from Irish designers Suki & Nic. "I can't understand why people will happily pay hundreds of euro for Gucci but often won't spend the same on something less mass produced from an Irish designer."

"Anything but look like everyone else," says Sean Williams about his summer wardrobe. He found a second-hand Christian Dior jacket in vintage store Harlequin; his jeans and T-shirt got their distressed look from some imaginative scissor cutting. A look only for summer - imagine the draughts in winter. Williams is part of the display team at Brown Thomas, so dressing outside the norm is par for the course. "I try to follow fashion but not copy exactly what's in magazines," he says. "I'll go to second-hand stores and do my own interpretation."

Kate Conkey, a make-up artist from Texas, is wearing a top from Miss Selfridge, second-hand jeans from Oxfam and flat black patent shoes from French Connection. She chooses her clothes for practicality as much as style. "As a make-up artist I need to have my arms as free as possible, so tank tops work best."

As Conkey lives in central Dublin she walks almost everywhere, hence the flat shoes. She says she doesn't spend too much on clothes. "Most of what I'm wearing here is from the high street, but I'll go to vintage shops like Harlequin on Castle Market for a cool belt like this elephant head."

Her best tip is to keep an eye out for designer sample sales, where Irish designers sell old season clothes for a fraction of their original price. At these she buys from her designer friend Antonia Campbell Hughes. "I'm doing two things: supporting a friend and getting clothes cheap!"

Ben Readman is an artist and model. He claims not to put a lot of time or money into what he wears, but he still looks cool in a straightforward kind of way. There's not much to say about a T-shirt-and-jeans look, but for summer the brighter the colour the better the T-shirt, and baggy rather than tight fitting, seem to be good rules of thumb. "The T-shirt belongs to my flatmate," he says, "the jeans are from Evisu in Paris and the shoes from Wild Child." Like the others wearing jeans here, his have wide turn-ups and are faded from genuine wear and tear, not artificial distressing.

Event manager Jonathan McCrea is the boyfriend of designer Joanne Hynes, so you'd expect him to have a head start stylewise, what with all the advice on hand. He's also something of an extrovert, which explains why he wears the kind of jacket many men would shy away from. He wears a striped boating jacket from second-hand shop A Store is Born, open only on Saturdays on Clarendon Street, with trousers from Oxfam and a bright hand printed T-shirt by Positive. The only expensive item he wears are shoes from Prada in London. "If you wear expensive everything from head to toe you look like a twit," he says.

Overdressing or dressing to impress doesn't seem to interest him. "I like to mix different things, casual and formal." It takes more imagination to make this approach work, but "you get something personalised and not run-of the-mill".

Jenny Fahey, a DJ, wears colourful clothes that few might consider, but they work because there are no rules to which colours she puts with one another. A yellow jacket and pink shoes? No problem. Perhaps the bravery to mix comes from buying designer and inexpensive high-street styles, so it's not such a big deal if something doesn't work out. In this case, the Seven jacket is from Koi Samui in London, but the pink shoes are from Shoe Rack. She bought her Lee jeans with turn-ups at Urban Outfitters and her Adidas sports top in London. The look seems partly inspired by music: take a look at MTV and you'll see the similarities. Seventies-style sunglasses are by cult brand Spitfire.