Red or Dead is a big name in fashion. Wayne Hemingway - its founder and twice winner of the British Fashion Council's "Street Style Designer of the Year" award - is not a one-man band helped by a few seamstresses. But who would have believed it when he chose to show the autumn collection at a bring-and-buy sale in St Mary's Church in Dublin's Haddington Road? There among the cut flowers, sponge cakes and general jumble was what looked very much like a pile of second-hand clothes. But no, this was "the collection".
The slightly eccentric Hemingway, who started the business 15 years ago at the age of 21, insists that most of his inspiration comes from his grandmother, whose dress sense was dictated by such factors as the weather in Lancashire and, obviously, a liking for woolly skirts and jumpers. What Hemingway has done with that has to be marvelled at. He turned it into a youth cult, for starters, and has kept that feel of a Camden Market stall, where he once sold off the contents of his boyish wardrobe. They may be young clothes but their roots go deep.
It's a funny mix of tradition and modern. It is, he says, innovative, ironic (definitely), irreverent and, best of all, affordable. It's an ageless society (he's 36), we know but, of course, it's always better to be young.
It's the shoes, however, that stop any slide into too much tradition and granny worship: big, clubby things with high, heavy heels (a mad update of the brogue if you like).
The whole collection, though streetwise, is countrified: the natural colours, the belted macs, worn with skinny rib-knit dresses, the Argyle stockings, the plus-fours and pleated tartan and herringbone culottes. That's country dressing. And so are the corduroy jackets, and pork pie hats. The men's clothes are on much the same lines.
It looks like home dressmaking, and that's its charm - plus the fact that there's lots of denim too.
There are tailored things: fitted jackets and tight skirts and wide, ankle-grazing trousers, with plenty of tangerine, raspberry and bright green running through. Boiled knits have that lived in feel. And there is plenty of denim.
Stockists include Makullas, O'Connors and Korkys in Dublin; The Warehouse in Cork, and See-Saw in Waterford, and many other outlets.
The designer is against mind-sets, and is always on the search for something new. This season he's found something new in an old tradition: those tweed skirts certainly take one back a few decades when hardly anyone had heard of style.