Greetings from Ireland
When it comes to colour, it’s different shades of greenery that spring to mind when imagining Ireland. The shamrocks, the verdant scenery — it’s known as The Emerald Isle for a reason. So it’s fitting that a menswear designer who plays on her Irish roots so heavily should be making liberal use of the colour for their AW23 collection; from bright and tropical froggy to more earthy, boggy tones.
It’s not just the colours that her birthplace inspires, Ireland is the beating heart of the Robyn Lynch brand. But what does Ireland mean to Robyn Lynch the person? “First of all, it’s home,” she says, “but there is also a sense of pride in it. The culture has some really nice characteristics. There’s quite a lot of humour, which I like to touch on as well. I think also a sense of nostalgia.” Robyn looks back to Ireland with fondness, but also with a light sense of irony, taking tatty, sometimes tacky, and downright cliché scraps of her homeland and elevating them exquisitely with high-fashion treatment. Her collections balance serious engineered pieces that showcase a forensic understanding of textile and technique with absurd graphic elements, like gimmicky tourist souvenirs or scans of her Dad’s fave football jerseys, digitally altered and plastered across oversize tees.
Her collections don’t immediately scream high fashion, but then neither does Robyn. In fact, she began her career in textiles at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. “I actually wanted to do fashion, but I didn’t get into fashion, which is quite ironic,” she says. In hindsight it may not have been such a bad thing. On her textiles course she learned the basics of making all kinds of garments from scratch, then spent her weekends taking sewing classes with local grannies who hand-stitched pillowcases. The formative grounding in materials she got at NCAD lends her work a distinctive technical edge that might not have materialised had she gone straight into her dream field.
Her collections don’t immediately scream high fashion, but then neither does Robyn. In fact, she began her career in textiles at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. “I actually wanted to do fashion, but I didn’t get into fashion, which is quite ironic,” she says. In hindsight it may not have been such a bad thing. On her textiles course she learned the basics of making all kinds of garments from scratch, then spent her weekends taking sewing classes with local grannies who hand-stitched pillowcases. The formative grounding in materials she got at NCAD lends her work a distinctive technical edge that might not have materialised had she gone straight into her dream field. Respect for technique underpins all of Robyn’s collections. She starts with a process or a material and then builds everything from there, letting her suppliers, her materials, her yarns for the season drive the work instead of a predetermined story. “We look at what we have and what we don’t have, and I try to find a fabric or a way to dye it.” “I’m not conceptual,” she’s said in previous interviews, which is why she doesn’t name her collections. Naming them would create a story that might distract from the work itself. But for her inaugural show at NOW Gallery, she’s very much “being conceptual”, and there is, of course, a story.
Greetings From Ireland is a full-blown homage to her homeland, guided for the first time by what Robyn Lynch wants to say rather than the materials she has at her disposal. It’s a nostalgic look at Ireland and the people and places there that have inspired and supported her rising stardom in the fashion world, as well as exploring her creative journey.
“I think more about wearability now. I don’t want to produce for the sake of producing – that just wastes everyone’s time.”
Produced in collaboration with Irish artist Rory Mullen, the entire exhibition takes place inside a bouncy inflatable house in which viewers are invited to explore three different stages of the designer’s process. Fittingly, it begins with research, in a room plastered with all the clippings, swatches, sketches and visual references that have inspired Robyn’s collections between 2019 and the present day, alongside candid behind-the-scenes shots of her Hackney Wick studio. The space has been designed as a 3D version of the visual journal that lives on her website, on which you can scroll through reams of images uploaded from the phones of both Robyn and her assistant, Holly. There are candid shots of model fittings, in-progress snaps of the pair designing their signature shirts, and endless cups of tea, served in Guinness mugs. “It’s almost like a Tumblr,” Robyn says, but enormous, and in 3D.
In the second room, visitors can witness the transformation of these ideas into physical garments, and see the way that materials and techniques affect the final form. There’s even an opportunity for guests to digitally “wear” the studio’s garments thanks to an installation of motion sensors and screens.
The third and final room is about community, and the people behind the brand, including the numerous Irish creatives that have helped her to bring the exhibition to life. Here you’ll be able to see a short film about the relationships that have shaped the brand. “We have been documenting this whole journey since Fashion East on our little handheld camera,” says Robyn. “We have an abundance of videos that we are going to piece together and show a celebration of the community. Basically, we want to make people feel that they can be a part of it too. It will be a 360 of who we are.”
“At our first few shows, I was really heavy on narrative. For me, that was the pinnacle of the whole collection. I was building the story, thinking of the look book.”
Though it’s Robyn’s debut at NOW Gallery, she feels like the exhibition has been in the works since she was in education. While still a student studying in Ireland, Robyn spent her summers in London, interning at various fashion brands to bolster her textile experience. In 2015, she interned for the designer Phoebe English, whose “introspective” was the first annual fashion commission at the then recently-opened NOW gallery. While interning, Robyn helped her to bring the exhibition to life. “She had these amazing wooden sculptures; I’ll never forget them. They were kind of museum artefacts. On the inside were all her notes, drawings, fabric samples and textile swatches. That was really informative for me as a student,” she says.
When she later decided to pursue menswear, London was the only place to be. “Men’s fashion week was booming, there were so many events, and the buzz around it was very new,” she says. “It was way less saturated than it is now. There was a bit more space for new people to emerge onto the platform. It felt more of an underdog.”
In the years since, Robyn has gone from underdog to emerging talent, to full-blown industry name. Her first solo runway show took place in 2018, just a few months after her graduation, supported by a grant from Fashion East, a non-profit talent incubator based in London. Through its initiatives, emerging young designers get to show their designs during fashion week, where they’re granted access to international buyers, press and industry figures. That’s how Robyn Lynch the student became ROBYN LYNCH the brand.
What was it that set her apart from her peers? Her authenticity to herself, her homeland and her approach to storytelling, she believes – not to mention an ability to learn fast. “At our first few shows, I was really heavy on narrative,” she says. “For me, that was the pinnacle of the whole collection. I was building the story, thinking of the lookbook.” But storytelling has its price – Robyn’s shorts failed to sell, too short for the market, and impossible to wear.
Fast-forward to now, she is one of the recipients of the British Fashion Council’s NEWGEN programme. Her final show in this programme will be in February 2024. “I had to change my approach. I think more about wearability now. I don’t want to produce for the sake of producing – that just wastes everyone’s time. I’m conscious that commerciality is sometimes bad. But at the end of the day, you have to face some kind of commercial reality in order for us to sustain our livelihoods.”
Thankfully, shifting her focus towards wearability and commerciality did nothing to diminish Robyn’s experimental approach. Witness her AW20 collaboration with high fashion cycling brand Rapha, in which Robyn reimagined their technical pieces with structured aran-knit embellishments, or her SS22 collaboration with Columbia that saw her repurpose ski trousers into technical jackets. Or indeed, witness the giant inflatable house that contains every part of Greetings From Ireland — proof, if any were needed, that practicality doesn’t have to diminish creativity.
Greetings from Ireland is open to the public between 8 December 2023 – 25 February 2024 at NOW Gallery.
Images by Jake Green
