It's official - the pashmina is dead. Once the once-fabulously-expensive and fabulously soft scarves started appearing in high street chains such as Marks & Spencer and Debenhams, it was only a question of time before their cachet was lost. But if you've been keeping an eye on trends around town you might have spotted the "new pashmina" draped around the necks of the fash pack, It girls and clubbers alike.
Long scarves in a rib knit, they are distinguished from their Dr Who or old-school ancestors by the nifty mohair loop, their candy colours, their ridiculously soft texture and of course, their label. A glimpse of stitching is all you need to know these scarves are made by sphere one; the label is just a circle stitched into the scarf. Once you've identified it, you'll find it crops up on simple draped-neck sweaters, halter-neck tops with silver clasps and soft, grey hoodies - all designed by a Dubliner, Lucy Downes, who started the label just this season.
"It struck me as ridiculous that after you'd spent a fortune on a cashmere jumper, as often as not you get an itchy label sewn into the back. At the same time, you want something that reminds you why you bought it and who it's by - and for other people in the know to recognise it too. The stitched-in circle does that, even if you do have to put up with a period of people telling you that your jumper is inside-out," Lucy explains. It's exactly this type of deft fashion touch allied to a canny business sense that sets Downes apart from her contemporaries. When you buy a sphere one piece, it's not just thrown into a plastic bag - it's handed over in its own special box full of tissue paper. The logo on the box is designed by renowned Irish painter Patrick Scott, a family friend. As for the pieces themselves, they're all knitted the size of an old man's vest and boiled into the right shape.
Downes's eclectic approach seems to be inspired in equal parts by her background, her education (which left her with two degrees, one in economics and business and the other in fashion design), and by her previous work experience on the cutting edge of design with Donna Karan in New York.
"I like to borrow from other disciplines all the time," she says. "With the name, for example, I realised that if I was an architect firm or a film production company, the name of my company wouldn't just be my name. It would try to sum up some essence of what I did. The idea for the boxes I borrowed from shoe boxes where, if you've spent lots of money on some shoes you have a box you can keep them in and tissue to wrap them in. It makes it feel special."
Downes was born and brought up in the heartland of Dublin 4, the daughter of high-powered couple Desmond and Margaret Downes. She says summers spent at the family's converted schoolhouse in Wicklow, where she now lives and works, had a major influence on her chosen career. "I wasn't always making clothes as a child, although I do remember making some boots for my brother's Snoopy one Christmas. I made them on mine to get the size right but I sewed them onto his feet, so I had to give him my Snoopy as well as the boots . . .
"All the summers in Wicklow were spent putting on shows or making costumes or painting stones. It really showed me I was happiest when I was on my own focusing on some project." Her route to fashion was indirect. After getting a degree in economics and business from Trinity she toyed with the idea of entering that "whole banking, yuppy world that was so big in the 1980s" before deciding to take up a place at NCAD she had been offered four years before. One of a batch of NCAD students that also yielded up Marc O'Neill and Ciaran Sweeney, she won a clutch of awards as well as attaining a first class honours degree.
By then, the folks at DKNY in Manhattan had offered her a job. During a summer stint as an intern in DKNY, she attracted the attention of the head of shoe design by exhaustively filing the leather archives: "I don't think they were used to the Irish who come in with this `do anything' attitude." After a second summer there, she showed them her design work and they asked her to leave college and join them immediately. When she decided to finish her degree, they kept the job offer open.
During her four years in New York, she graduated from assisting the designers to overseeing the expansion of the range into China and Taiwan. Apart from keeping her up bang up to date with trends, she acknowledges that her time with DKNY showed her how a big business is structured; "If I'm ever unsure of something now, at least I know how a really big company would go about it." Her background in economics is similarly helpful, although she jokes that it taught her everything about strategic marketing of McDonalds and very little about applying for a grant or book-keeping.
"I'm also aware it gives me a credibility. I'm not just going to the bank manager saying `I have the fabuhlous idea,' " she says, lapsing into mock fashion-speak. When it came to designing the first range for sphere one, Lucy started with the yarn. Realising that knitting with pure cashmere would be prohibitively expensive, she sourced a cashmere/viscose mix, then went about dyeing it to her own taste. Trial and error at home produced the technique of boiling or felting the pieces into shape - a procedure that makes the pieces lighter as well as fluffier - although that work is now carried out by a specialist factory in Scotland.
When it came to designing the pieces, Downes used a good dollop of good sense to compliment fashion flare. She realised many women like the look of hoodie jumpers but find them bulky under a suit, so she made a piece with a drawstring neck and a separate hood. Then there are the drape-necked jumpers - bright, dolly pink with a red band along the bottom; you can either tuck them in for a more business look or leave them out for casual days "or when you're feeling fat".
`I wanted to make something in a colour and style I would wear myself and at a price that was reasonable," she says. "Some of the jumpers are around £300 which isn't a snip but for what they are, they're good value." Even her choice of stockists was carefully thought out and based on her own experiences. "I go into somewhere like Macy's and I see all these racks of clothes and it really turns me off. I wanted the pieces to be in shops where there would be somebody behind the counter that would be able to tell you about the clothes or me or whatever."
By promising a level of exclusivity to Havana in Donnybrook, Cuba on Trinity Street and Kalu in Naas, she ensured each stockist took a large selection of her pieces in each of her six chosen colours which go by names such as violent vermillion and ferocious fuchsia. So far, sales are very good, with reorders for those scarves flooding in. In her carefully worked out business plan, Lucy had optimistically hoped to cover Dublin in season one, the rest of Ireland and Northern Ireland in season two and then look to either New York or London by season three. But the head of sales of cult fashion house Joseph bought two of her pieces on the first day they were in Havana; and just the day before our interview a large Japanese store had left a card in Cuba, so it looks as though all that might accelerate.
"I don't really get fazed by things but when I look back over the last year, I suddenly realise how well I've done."