Wild Things

FASHION: Leather is in Róisín Gartland's blood, but her studies in Fine Art have widened her horizons. Her new collection is a mix of avant-garde and conventional shapes in a wide variety of materials

THE FIRST THING that strikes the visitor to Róisín Gartland's studio in at Trinity Enterprise Centre in Pearse Street, Dublin 2 is the pungent smell of sheepskin and leather. "I don't get it at all," laughs Gartland, who this year won an RDS medal in recognition of the excellence of her craftsmanship. Her winning pieces, a bespoke shearling coat and gilet are currently on tour and will go on display at the forthcoming RDS craft fair next month.

In the meantime, her current collection consists of 100 pieces created in her studio, using the finest leathers, suedes and shearlings, some lined in thick curly hair, perfect for chilly winter days. Her bestsellers are classic pieces in a soft and supple black Japanese hide, finished with a telltale flourish such as a handmade silver button which she makes herself, or a pintuck detail. "Pintucking and pleating are what this collection is celebrating," she says. Waistcoats in merino with a suede finish are sleek winter warmers.

She is currently working on a magnificent tailormade piece, a full-length black suede coat, artfully appliquéd with natural skin shapes at front and back. "It's made from Ethiopian hairsheep, which grow hair rather than wool, so it has an extra fine nap and is also washable," she explains, spreading it out like a carpet on the floor.

Other pieces include pintucked suede waistcoats, fine suede vests and a gilet in curly white Afghan lamb she calls "a flight of fancy". More playful and flamboyant are throws made from curly haired Italian lamb, and velvety Icelandic wool. Leather clothing, she says, only accounts for 10 per cent of the leather industry - the rest being shoes, bags and accessories - so there is little that is specially designed for clothing. Python, for instance, is too thick to cut. But next season she will introduce laser-printed leather for the first time.

Gartland has leather in her blood. Her father was a fur cutter and she grew up in a large family with eight brothers and two sisters, with a mother who made all their clothes. Her brother Liam started a leather business in Dublin in the mid-1970s making garments for Ritzy, Michael Mortell and John Rocha among others, which is where the young Róisín started work at the age of 14. Now she and her brother Pat are the only two left in Dublin making leather clothing.

Some years ago she closed her commercial business to concentrate on art and gained a degree in Fine Art from Dún Laoghaire college as well as spending two years in UCD studying History of Art. She has since had an exhibition called Hook and I and is currently working on a new project involving cutting through her old patterns and reassembling them. "Leather and paper will be a feature of the artwork," she says.

Developing new skills such as making porcelain, sculpture and silverwork informs and enriches her design perspective. "One of the reasons why I work with so many materials now is that for too many years I worked with only one. Now I let my ideas determine the materials."

It's well expressed in an Italian lambskin coat she is making for a client, an earthy, organic piece that seems at first glance an abstract collection of skins, but on closer examination is finely detailed and assembled with footage markers deliberately left on the skins.

That mix of conventional with more avant-garde shapes is what distinguishes her current collections, which she makes herself with the help of two assistants, her nieces Kiki and Louise. "The hardest thing to learn is to be precise and to be confident. If you are afraid of the material you will never get far with it. There is no room for mistakes."

Róisín Gartland's studio is on the fifth floor of The Tower, Trinity Enterprise Centre, Pearse Street, Dublin 2. She also makes lambskin collars (perfect for dressing up a coat), leather belts, fingerless gloves, document cases and even leather suiters.