Designing, cutting, sewing, finishing: these women make their own clothes not just to save money but for the satisfaction money can't buy, writes Deirdre McQuillan.
CAOIMHE DERWIN
Shop assistant, musician
With a full-time job in Murphy Sheehy fabric shop in Castle Market, Dublin 2, Caoimhe Derwin's daily life is one surrounded by fabrics. Taught to sew by her mother as a young teenager, Derwin started making fun fur bags and sold them in SéSí in Temple Bar. "I make a good few clothes. If I am going out and want something in particular, then I just make it. There are a lot of things I like that can't be found in shops, such as 1950s pin-up styles, so I just make them myself."
Dresses are her main preoccupation and she is currently running up a number of circular skirts and baby doll dresses, "things that I like", in fabrics that catch her eye. "I like bold patterns with a 1950s look, but I also like things with unusual graphics or vintage prints. My favourite is a wood block print of Puss in Boots. I like the ironic effect of such prints on dresses."
Draughting her own patterns, it takes her a full day to make a dress. "I have a couple of shapes that I like and I just change features such as collars or buttons. Each dress costs me around €20-€25." Being keen on mini dresses, she's quick to add that they don't require that much fabric. For buttons and trimmings, she heads to shops such as the Woollen Mills and Rubanesque on South William Street. "I have loads of buttons and a magpie collection of trimmings. I have boxes and boxes on my sewing machine."
Having recently formed a new band called Tallulah Does the Hula, in which she plays guitar, bass and keyboard as well as singing, she has made herself a special outfit for their next gig in Crawdaddy with a band called Sweet Jane on February 28th. "It's a black satin skirt with musical notes and gold anchor buttons."
JULIA DOHERTY
Fashion student
"I am the person who turns things inside out in shops. I am very fussy when I look at things," smiles Julia Doherty, a woman with magic in her fingertips, and a wizard at fabric transformation. She can cut up "whatever comes to hand and rework it", run up a dress in half an hour if she feels like it, whip up a tie for a friend in exchange for a painting, and even as a teenager fashioned a red gabardine tailcoat for circus ringmaster Marion Fossett.
Scales, who is studying fashion at the National College of Art and Design and working on the forthcoming musical comedy, Macbecks, says her whole life has been about sewing. "I got my first sewing machine, which I still use because it does buttonholes, for my ninth birthday." She inherited her skills from her grandmother Una, herself an accomplished seamstress.
"I like the process of making more than anything else. I love cutting and construction and I am really big on shape," she says, showing me an adroitly cut scoop neck jersey tunic, finished with blind hems. Everybody admires it, including her boyfriend, whom it suits, too. She explains how she cut into the fabric to get the shape.
Fabrics in Dublin are "awful, miserable", she complains, so once every two weeks, she trawls second-hand shops in Camden Street, Capel Street and Bolton Street for fabric. Her most inspiring find was a piece of olive taffeta, which she bought for €l from Hickeys, and which she fashioned into an elaborate bow and wore as a headband. "What is the minimum you can do with it for maximum impact?" she asked herself. Fabric inspires her.
Recently, she has been perfecting her craftsmanship with veteran tailors in Louis Copeland, men who have worked with fabric all their lives. It is an experience she describes as "the best I ever got in my life. I love tailoring; a suit has to look beautiful and understated whereas with dresses you can do what you want. Anyone can sew, but actually being good at it takes a lot out of you. You have to put in the detail that makes it worth looking at. I always want to learn more."
KATHRYN O'BRIEN
Artist, freelance designer
Kathryn O'Brien's creativity and artistry know no barriers when it comes to making her mark on any material - be it canvas, yarn or fabric.
O'Brien was introduced to knitting at the age of three by her mother, who made all her children's clothes and who provided her eldest daughter with the first pair of bell-bottoms seen in Clontarf. She was already earning pocket money at 13, knitting Aran sweaters. At school she learned how to do crochet and lacemaking, and later studied design at NCAD. "I never put a needle down," she says.
Her passion for customising also began early. Growing up, she remembers "robbing" all her father's old white shirts, cutting off their collars and sleeves, then handpainting and decorating them with heavy embroidery. Then, with a leather belt slung around the waist "you had a hippie dress". Nowadays, riding her Harley or Kawasaki bikes, even her "posh" leather jackets are customised in some way.
As a freelance designer, she divides her time between Ireland and Italy, where she has a house near Venice. In Ireland, the only place to get wool is Hickeys, she says, but when she's in Italy she trawls through local markets. "Every single small town has a little shop selling wool - it could be a granny and two daughters running it. Italians are obsessed with knitting, and their patterns are easy because they are all in diagrams and you get measurements and stitches and that's it, off you go! I knew a 100-year-old great-grandmother and she was knitting up to the time she died." Knitting, she maintains, is a bonding process. "It brings people together because they end up swapping secrets."
Dressed in a coat she has fashioned from a mixture of Italian tweed samples and remnants from Hickeys, jeans she made and hand painted, a striped scarf, and a knit and leather bag, also of her own making, she cuts quite a figure. "I describe my style as pirate; I mean, it could be anything, it means I don't fit into a category."
Apart from designing and making her own clothes and knitwear, she also makes big theatrical canvases, and paints and exhibits annually in the Medici Palace in San Leo near San Marino. Recently, she completed a degree in Fine Arts at NCAD and was manager of the art installation project The Knitting Map of Cork, teaching knitting skills to more than 1,000 volunteers.
The most difficult thing she has ever made was a three-piece fantasy costume in botany wool and kid mohair for a fashion show in Italy. "For me, everything is art, and materials - whether powdered pigments or fabric samples - can be transformed into something special and unique with a little imagination and patience."
CLARE GALLAGHER
Trainee teacher
A late starter, Clare Gallagher learned how to sew at the age of 19. "I was always interested in sewing and wanted to make things for myself because I am interested in style."
It was, she says, primarily about self-expression. "I had quite an unusual style of dressing at the time because I was very interested in Japanese punk and I never wanted to look like everybody else." Cost is another factor. "In winter, I would prefer to make rather than a buy a coat because of the expense, though coats tend to be the most difficult to make because of the detail."
Gallagher, who is self-taught, did a course in fashion design at the Grafton Academy and then ended up doing other courses, to the point where she was confident enough to open her own shop in Temple Bar.
"I can make my own patterns and do all my own cutting. I had my shop just for a year." Now she makes everything at home on a Brother machine.
She buys most of her fabrics in Murphy Sheehy, and sources more "fancy" pieces on her travels abroad. "I tend to go for colour - colour is a big one for me - and I like fabrics that are unusual or have detailing in them."
At Christmas she made two dresses for herself, one a tartan mini prom dress with a tight bodice and a full tutu skirt, "a bit punk", and the other an empire-line dress with bell sleeves in peach brocade, "very 1960s."
Normally it takes her about four to five hours to make a dress, "if I give it a good run", but in terms of difficulty, nothing fazes her. "I just love sewing. It's so rewarding when you have made something yourself. People say lovely things about my stuff. It's something I just have to do and I find it really fun and relaxing."
Though she does buy readymade clothes occasionally, most of her shopping is for vintage or online on eBay.
"I think I save a fortune, but you don't have to spend a fortune to look good with places such as TopShop and Penneys making fashion so affordable and disposable. It doesn't often work out cheaper making your own because fabric is expensive; the difference is that you get exactly what you want."
ANNA MAZUREK
Healthcare assistant
"I have been making my own clothes for more than 30 years," says Anna Mazurek, who is from Poland, and came to live and work in Ireland a year ago. With a grandmother who sold angora knits from her own rabbits to make money during the second World War, and a mother who could sew, knit and crochet, Mazurek considers her inherited skills are a means of survival. "The first thing I made, when I was 12, was a blouse. It was my first stab at independence because I didn't want to have to ask my mother to do it."
Today, her house in Glasnevin is home to heirloom items such as a crochet tablecloth made by her mother, Romana, along with her own creations, many of which, stored in a chest of drawers, testify to her abundant creative energy. When we met she had been using her evenings and canteen breaks at work to make crochet angels, snowflakes and bells for Christmas tree decorations. "I hate wasting time," she says.
In Poland she owned a haberdashery shop, and when she moved to Ireland she took everything from it including machines, magazines, overlockers and yarns, "because I knew they would be useful here." She laments the paucity of materials in Dublin. She looks for fabric bargains and buys on impulse - ideas follow. A red MS skirt bought in a sale for €1 was transformed with the addition of tartan box pleats; another was lengthened with tweed crochet. She buys Burda pattern magazine in Eason's, but prefers Italian magazines "because they know how to make women more feminine."
For Mazurek, making something, whether it's a tailored jacket with topstitching details or a colourful textured scarf, is a relaxation "and a kind of addiction," she admits. "I can't focus on things if I have empty hands. What I make probably costs a quarter of a readymade item, but the satisfaction is something you can't buy."