[dropcap]I[/dropcap] challenge any of you to pick up the weekly paper and see menswear in it. You won’t see it in the Sunday Independent, you just see tits. Menswear don’t have tits unfortunately so we can’t feature in the Sunday Independent.” According to Indigo & Cloth’s Garrett Pitcher, the representation of menswear in Irish media is “shite, exclamation mark!”. It’s unquestionable that menswear rarely gets a look in in Ireland’s weekly papers, apart from the occasional “menswear special”. “There’s no one person who represents menswear in this country, no one,” Pitcher insists. He mentions Darren Kennedy and Brendan Courtney, both of whom he admires, but explains that their role “is not menswear, it’s generally womenswear”.
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed that menswear has abandoned its safety net. In 2015, you can now find streetwear, traditional tailoring and experimental designs playing off each other on the street and on the runway. Womenswear rapidly courses through RTW, resort and couture seasons each year, hungrily engulfing and spitting out trend after trend, to such an extent that pieces are now considered utterly disposable — a shift that designers have shown themselves to be aware of, most notably in Jeremy Scott’s “fast fashions” for Moschino. “Womenswear ate itself, it covered every trend under the sun every season and finally it had its day. It’s not dead, but it is dying,” Pitcher argues. Menswear, on the other hand, operates at a different pace: “Menswear is far outgrowing womenswear. It went through a heritage stage, and now it will go through a reinvention stage, so you’re gonna have new fabrics, new brands. We’ve gone beyond trends.”
Dublin will never create a trend, and it will always be a follower. There’s nothing wrong with that, that’s just geography. But as a rule of thumb, we’re dressing a lot better now than we ever have.
While contemporary menswear may be underrepresented in Irish media, Dublin’s independent stores are breaking new ground. Indigo & Cloth opened in 2007 and, Pitcher notes, “We were the only menswear independent for years, which is ridiculous.” In the past year, Indigo was joined by both Nowhere, a fashion-oriented boutique on Aungier St founded by Brian Teeling and David Erixon, and Castle & Drury, a high-end store specialising in streetwear, owned and curated by Conor Rhatigan. Teeling describes the emergence of new menswear shopping experiences: “It’s an injection of youth and of fresh ideas, because fashion in general in Dublin is quite stale. People live and breathe Brown Thomas and the high street, and not everyone is like that.” Rhatigan says his decision to open a store came as a result of seeing the success of Indigo & Cloth, “seeing that it can work if it’s done right, that the market is here for it.” The increasing popularity of the menswear market outside of Ireland has led to customers wanting to be more creative with their everyday clothing. “Menswear in general is more popular, around the world,” Pitcher explains. “Between ourselves, Nowhere, and Castle & Drury, there’s no real crossover, but it allows for the average guy, or the guy into fashion in Dublin, to pick and choose little bits of where he sits in the market place. It’s like a continuum. I think there’s enough now in Dublin […] that you can get what you want without having to leave the shores.”
When asked whether there was such thing as a “Dublin” style of dressing, Teeling responds, “Big time! Same way that womenswear in Dublin is Penney’s. If I was to generalise, it would be the guy in the ‘thoughtless outfit’. They don’t put any thought into it, or their wives or girlfriends or boyfriends shop for them, and it’s what they think they should be wearing.” Pitcher argues, “I think Irish men and Dublin men can get a bit of a bad name and I don’t think it’s justified now. I think over the years it has been — your classic bootcut and hoodie and untucked shirt and all that kind of stuff.” He is quick to point out that Dublin men “do not dress as well as lots of cities in the rest of the world and never, ever will”: “It’s one of those questions you get asked all the time, but we are not New York, we are not Paris, we are not London. All those cities are international cities. It’s a melting pot of trends, and it’s actually the birth of trends. Dublin will never create a trend, and it will always be a follower. There’s nothing wrong with that, that’s just geography.” Teeling maintains that it’s not possible for menswear designers to succeed by staying in Dublin: “You need to go to London, to go to Paris, to go to New York. The reason that we don’t have as many Irish designers is because there aren’t that many, unfortunately. The consciousness of Nowhere is that we want to be supportive, we want to help, we want to promote.”
Unlike Teeling, who attributes the stagnation of menswear to the high street, Pitcher thinks it is the high street, not the work of the independent stores, which has led to men dressing better. Independent shops do this by providing different shopping experiences, and “[introducing] exclusive new designers, a lot of them young. We say contemporary because most of the brands that we stock have all been set up in the last ten years.” Pitcher has been at the forefront of this: “One of our niches is that we stock a decent selection of Irish. We work as a studio but also as a store as much with Irish craftmakers as possible.” He also points out that the high street isn’t as strong for menswear: “I don’t think any guy aspires to shop in H&M and Topshop. With independent stores, I think you can put your look together a little bit more and have more influence on it. That’s why I think menswear is kind of shining through more.”
All three agree that men in Dublin are “definitely becoming more aware” of fashion. Teeling observes that “it’s being more and more viewed as a masculine trait to look well. I’m not a fan of how he dresses, but I think [UFC fighter] Conor McGregor is kind of a leader in that respect. He’s wearing Prada, and Gucci, and beautiful tailoring, he has his hair in a bun, he looks after himself, and that’s kind of redefining what the classic masculine viewpoint is, rather than thinking that fashion is ‘gay’.” According to Teeling, “Men have always dressed for other men, always. Straight, gay, it doesn’t matter, they don’t dress for their [partners], they dress for other men.” Pitcher disagrees, “I would say that most of the guys who shop in here dress primarily for themselves. They will have girlfriends who just don’t get it, but they’ll buy in here irregardless, which I admire. That’s a strong person, a strong guy, which is great […] they don’t actually give a shit what anyone else thinks of them.”
Menswear has never been more exciting than it is right now. As men are becoming less conservative in how they dress, Dublin’s independent shops are rewriting contemporary perceptions of menswear and reflecting the dynamic state of menswear in 2015.
Indigo & Cloth will present the first instalment of the Blueprint Talks, as part of the Year of Irish Design, on January 29 at 7pm.
