Yasmin Velloza is one of Ireland's most talented fashion designers, but the well-travelled twentysomething is forging her career in Shanghai instead of the usual fashion capitals. Is the centre of fashion gravity going east?, writes Deirdre McQuillan
At 2.30pm on the afternoon of May 12th last, Irish fashion designer Yasmin Velloza was in her studio in Shanghai when she felt a sudden tremor and "all my curtains started to swing," she says. "All four of them. Everything was moving." Though the huge earthquake that hit southwestern China was hundreds of miles away, its effects were felt in Shanghai. "I had experienced an earthquake years ago in Japan when I was 15, but at first I thought I might have had a dodgy lunch."
Friends of hers lost relatives in the disaster. "The pollution that came up from Sichuan, the scorching summer heat, the mourning and the cries made Shanghai feel like a pressure pot," she says. She was glad to come home, though it felt surreal. "The whole country was in a state of shock."
It was an overwhelming month for other reasons, too. On May 24th, she held her first fashion show in front of an audience of 250 people in Jade on 36, a posh Shanghai bar and music venue. Sponsored by Tanqueray Gin and organised through a Venezuelan friend, the show featured her spring-summer collection, along with some archive pieces. It was a huge success. "Afterwards women were trying to buy the samples on the rails. I started crying of course. I have fashion show fever now. People were throwing bottles of champagne at me - it was instant celebrity, my 10 minutes of fame," she says with a smile. Afterwards, she celebrated with friends in an Irish pub watching the Munster final.
From a multicultural background, 27-year-old Velloza was born in New York, educated in the UK and Ireland and now divides her time between this country and China, and is one of Ireland's fastest-rising fashion stars. An NCAD graduate, she worked with Michael Mortell for a year designing raincoats and credits John Rocha's career as her real inspiration.
"He was the first person I worked for [on textile design] and he was there fitting Boyzone and Van Morrison and I thought this was really exciting." But it was Mortell's suggestion that she go to China to source fabrics for him that really got her career moving.
It was there that she was headhunted as design director by Eve, a big domestic mid-market brand for professional Chinese women. "They produce 200 styles a season with a western twist. I learned loads and had a team of seven designers working for me. It was all Chinglish communication - the owner Shan Hong was this larger-than-life Chinese woman who kept talking about fei shang, which means very good. 'We have fei shang colours! We make fei shang clothes.' " Her fashion Chinese, she says, is now very good and "my bartering Chinese is brilliant."
That experience enabled her to set up her own studio and her own label two years later in the spring of 2006. Launched with a professionalism rarely seen in such a young designer, she quickly established a name for luxurious, sexy, sophisticated clothes with interesting and subtle detail in natural fabrics such as cashmere, silk, cotton and bamboo in mostly plain colours.
"I am inspired by details, then fabrics and shape comes last," she says while explaining her design approach. "I am quite feminine in that I like the hourglass shape, the wasp waist with the fuller skirt. I like collars and cuffs and finishing touches like French knots and mother of pearl buttons." A standout red coat is a recurring motif in all her collections.
Small and vivacious with a flashing smile and a great sense of humour, Velloza has a natural charm and resilience. Her globetrotting childhood has given her an ease in any country or company in which she finds herself. She comes from a long line of artistic and creative people and credits her family as being very supportive of her career. Her grandmother in Guyana was an art teacher who was brilliant at crochet, while an aunt won the Silver Key Scholarship for Art in the late 1980s. She has uncles who are goldsmiths and one who designed the original stage set for Cats. Velloza's multi-talented mother Gillian, a trained orthodontist, has been a key player in her business, while her sisters act as models and help her to sell her collections.
Though she can count Liz O'Donnell, Andrea Roche and Miss Irelands among her more high-profile clients, growing a fashion business in Ireland is tough and challenging.
"I am carrying my business for 18 months before I get paid for the stock that goes into the shops. Stocks can be in the boutiques for three months before you get paid. It can be really crushing for a young designer. In one case I had a nightmare situation where I had to take back my collection."
Selling at trade fairs is costly and having taken the plunge last year to show in Paris at a cost of €30,000, she barely broke even. Still, there are plans to do a trade show in Moscow.
Such difficulties are making her determined, ultimately, to have her own shop to showcase her work. Already there is talk of opening an outlet in Beijing as a joint venture in the next year or so. In the meantime she has taken on a contract with a US clothing group to develop another label to be launched in the UK and Ireland next year called Coco Baroque, which will include a range of knits such as cashmere/silk blend wool coats and beaded cardigans retailing at €120 to €200. "I am designing, sampling and manufacturing [in China]. They are doing the selling."
Irish women, she says, shop for occasion wear. "When the Irish dress up, they dress up in a big way and even Friday night is an occasion," she says. "The Irish style is like Russia or China in that women appreciate luxury. Moscow women are very detail-oriented and it's not a dissimilar market to the Irish one."
For spring, she's working on tiny pleats and pintucking, applying texture to plain fabrics in colours such as coral and mint along with her familiar blacks, greys, creams and red. Skirts will be circular rather than pencil and she will introduce more variety in shapes and silhouettes. "It will be very luxurious and I think I want to keep going that way. I am really enjoying design now and I feel that my handwriting is getting stronger."
What impressed Mortell is her enthusiasm, amazing work ethic and blinding optimism. "She is such a positive thinker and when she came to work for me, nothing was impossible - it was a like a world of youth had opened. Now she's in the new world of fashion - it used to be go west, now it's go east and that is very valuable experience for her."
Yasmin Velloza's clothes are stocked in Pitt & Bond, Westbury Mall, Dublin; Ottiva, Enniscorthy; Jenny Turner, Enniskerry; South Beach, Youghal; Squisito, Clarinbridge; Syren Boutique, Mullingar; Macbees, Killarney; and Emporio, Belfast.