This year has seen the resurgence of ‘Celtic cool’ internationally with Irish designers, actors, musicians, filmmakers and artists being celebrated for their creative gifts.
As part of this renaissance, Irish designers’ success is now being recognised when competing against international names.
This month two of the top prizes at the British Fashion Awards were won by Jonathan Anderson, 40, born in Derry, who won the Designer of the Year, while Simone Rocha, 38, born in Dublin, won the British Womenswear Designer.
Michael Stewart of Standing Ground was also the recipient of a major fashion prize this year, winning the Savoir- Faire Prize at the 2024 LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers.
Another Dublin designer, Sean McGirr, is the creative director at Alexander McQueen since 2023 and recently joined The Business of Fashion Class of 500 for 2024, the definitive index of people shaping the global fashion industry.
These categories represent the most celebrated names in fashion and winning in such elevated company is high recognition for Anderson and Rocha.
Both designers explore ideas of gender, are inspired by art, and have a deep love of and appreciation for craft and artisan workmanship, but their design aesthetics are utterly different.
Rocha’s is darkly romantic while Anderson’s is witty and surreal, but both are always underpinned by excellent technique. Coincidentally both were diagnosed with dyslexia as children and didn’t relish academic studies, but this has not inhibited their design careers.
‘It’s good to see Irish people are back in vogue,’ Anderson said after his win. ‘I love fashion. It makes me get out of bed every morning.’
Jonathan Anderson
The Derryman is the son of Irish rugby international Willie Anderson – who played between 1984 and 1990 – and Heather Buckley, a teacher. After school, Anderson attended drama school in America, before returning to Ireland, selling menswear in Brown Thomas, Dublin.
He later studied at the London College of Fashion, graduating in 2005. He subsequently worked as a visual merchandiser for Prada before launching his own menswear brand, JW Anderson, in 2008.
His gender non-binary designs quickly drew attention, and he secured sponsorship from the British Fashion Council’s New Generation initiative in 2010.
He then enjoyed successful partnerships with Topman and Versus (Versace’s diffusion line) until in 2013 LVMH took a minority stake in his brand, and he was hired for the creative director role at Loewe in Madrid. It was a rapid ascent for the designer who had previously considered himself an underdog.
He has now enjoyed a clutch of awards from the British Fashion Council, most notably winning both the Best Menswear Brand and Womenswear Brand of the Year at the same time in 2015. Since Anderson’s appointment to the luxury Spanish leather goods brand Loewe, it has an annual turnover of €1 billion and has attained cult status.
‘I’m not here to please an industry, I’m here to challenge it,’ he told Vogue in an interview in January 2020.
Most notably, he has created a succession of It bags for Loewe including the Puzzle bag, the Gate bag, the Hammock bag, the Flamenco clutch and the Luna, making it one of fashion’s buzziest brands.
This success has driven revenues to increase fivefold for Loewe and has given him a secure tenure, while rivals have seen designers rotating with alarming rapidity. He is now 11 years with Loewe, but there has been recent speculation that he might be leaving the brand.
As well as his heavy fashion workload at Loewe and his own brand, Anderson has recently designed costumes for two films by the director Luca Guadagnino, Challengers and Queer, and only this week signed with Hollywood’s United Talent Agency.
He seems to relish a challenge and may, like fellow designer turned director Tom Ford, have ambitions to explore opportunities in other spheres.
Simone Rocha
Anderson’s fellow winner, Simone Rocha, who is London-based for the last 15 years, has also enjoyed an amazing year. In January, she was the guest designer at Jean Paul Gaultier for his haute couture fashion show, where her collection received rave reviews.
In February, her Autumn/ Winter 2024 collection at London Fashion Week was one of the ‘hot ticket’ shows and impossible to get into. Ditto for her Spring/Summer 2025 show in September.
If stars in your clothes are an indication of the buzz around a designer, then Rocha is on a definite roll. Off catwalk, her designs have been worn by Yvonne McGuinness (wife of Cillian Murphy), Diane Kruger, Ruth Negga, Paul Mescal and Rosamund Pike.
Kylie Jenner wore a nude Rocha dress on the Gaultier front row in Paris in January while Alexa Chung wore a Rocha red mini dress with dramatic bow to her LFW show. Billie Eilish also wore Rocha to the 2023 Met Gala.
All the praise and publicity are quite the coup for the designer who made her London Fashion Week debut in 2010. However, she continues in her signature low-key style to focus on her work and let her clothes do the talking.
In person she is shy and protective of her private life with her husband Eoin McLoughlin and their two young children. The daughter of fashion designer John Rocha and Odette, his business partner, who both had long fashion careers in Ireland, Simone has said that it was ‘inevitable’ that she would follow in her father’s career path.
She worked in his studio between the ages of 13 and 18 and then undertook a BA in Fashion Design at the National College of Art and Design. She did an MA at Central Saint Martin’s in London under the late Louise Wilson, who also mentored famous names like Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.
She showed her graduate collection at the Tate Modern at London Fashion Week in 2010 and went on to start her own brand with an installation in the window of fashion retailer Dover Street Market. She now has four stores in London, New York and Taiwan and is stocked by Harrods, Mytheresa, Bergdorf Goodman and Nordstrom. Her mother Odette works in the business too.
Rocha published a monograph this year reviewing the first decade of her design career with the art publisher Rizzoli. It featured imagery of her creations as well as contributions from collaborators, friends, family and image makers, highlighting her burgeoning reputation.
She has always designed with a heightened romantic aesthetic and typically blends craft techniques – lace, crochet and hand knits – with tailoring and evening wear which display her interest in exploring dramatic volume and architectural silhouettes.
Favourite motifs she returns to include ribbons, pearls, red flowers, lacing and cocoon shapes, and she has highlighted her joint Irish and Chinese heritage in her work alongside complex ideas of femininity and masculinity. Design collaborations with J Brand, Moncler, Crocs and H&M have brought her work to a wider audience.
Her Autumn Winter 2024 London show was staged in the oldest church in the city, St Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield. Titled The Wake, it explored death and mourning garments, particularly those of Queen Victoria, which Rocha researched in the royal archive at Hampton Court Palace.
After this most recent win, what she does next is hers for the choosing, but she will continue to forge her unique and personal vision with her favourite inspirations of art, nature, family, Ireland and Asia.
Both Anderson and Rocha are now established fashion figures and as such the inspiration for a new generation – let’s hope they have forged the way for many more successful Irish designers in international fashion.
