To celebrate the revamp of their three stores, BT2 held a catwalk show last night in its Grafton Street shop in Dublin, introducing some of 20 new small niche brands sourced from Australia, the US and Europe.
"We're adding pockets of smaller brand names not stocked elsewhere to keep the customer interested," buyer Karen Higgins said. The three stores are also now stocking accessories such as zany bags and jewellery at reasonable prices.
Ms Higgins is one of the Brown Thomas group's most experienced buyers, with a nose for spotting new talent. She was the first to introduce Alexander McQueen to Irish customers and spends 10 months of the year shopping for contemporary labels.
The show was styled mixing her finds together "the way the customer dresses" rather than by brand, and had a youthful freshness with items such as tweed shorts worn with sheepskin gilets or spotted cashmere tank tops over silk dresses.
The big story this winter, however, is sweater dressing, and the show had an impressive and well-selected line-up of the new slouchy knitted dresses and cardigan coats as well as pure cashmere at inexpensive prices.
Brands to watch include the French-styled but Los Angeles-based American Retro, with an innovative collection of jackets and pinafore dresses mixing tweed and cable knit, while a young Australian designer called Alice McCall had neat black and white wool coats with contrast piping and Peter Pan collars for just under €400.
Other winners were stretch skinny jeans in denim or corduroy for €55 from a US brand called Cheap Monday, worn with silk spotted dresses from Laundry Industries from Holland.