On a warm weekday morning, East 9th Street in the heart of the East Village in lower Manhattan is quiet. A tote bag with Sinéad O’Connor printed on it is visible from the window of a new homeware and gifts shop on the block, Irving Green.
“The Guinness is a bit of a giveaway,” owner Alison Doyle says of the shop’s roots, pointing to Guinness prints on the wall by Studio143. Like London, New York is in the midst of a Guinness boom, and the prints are in high demand. Throughout the cosy shop, the Irish influence is pronounced. There’s Adelle Hickey stationery, contemporary Claddagh-inspired jewellery by the Irish brand Don’t Kill My Vibe, and blankets by Foxford and McNutt.
Irving Green is a venture by Doyle, a Dubliner, to bring quality Irish homeware products and gifts – classic and contemporary – to New York city, and to bring herself that bit closer to home. Although retail has been in her family, it’s a new project for Doyle, who left her job in sales in a tech company to pursue a dream.
During and after the pandemic, Doyle was working from home a lot. Now she’s working in her store six days a week. One day off isn’t much, “but I have much more interaction with people, more interaction with the neighbourhood ... It’s a much more creative outlet. I find it much better for my mental health to be able to interact with people.”
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The desire to be her own boss was strong. “Working for yourself – I don’t think you can put a price on it ... Corporate America just wasn’t for me any more. I found it more and more stressful. I never fully got comfortable with it.”
She had a “kernel” of an idea for a shop about a decade ago, but the timing wasn’t right. Towards the end of last year, she began looking at spaces in the neighbourhood. Where she is now used to be a children’s toy shop. One day, walking down the street, she noticed the shop and thought she would love a space just like it. A week later a friend called to say they’d heard a space in the neighbourhood was coming up. It happened to be the very same one. Doyle wrote up a business plan, left her job at the end of January, by February was renovating the space, and opened in April.
A key product is the Dublin brand Rathborne Candles, founded in 1488 on Winetavern Street, before moving to what’s now called Prussia Street in Stoneybatter in the mid-17th century. “The story matters,” Doyle says of the heritage of Irish brands. “When you tell the story about the oldest candles in the world, people love that.”
She moves on to the Foxford blankets. “Knowing where the blankets are made in a mill in Co Mayo, people love that story ... You can go 10 blocks up and go to Crate & Barrel or wherever you want, but you have a certain shopper who comes into a store like this who wants the story behind an item.”
The East Village has been heavily gentrified in recent years, yet maintains its spirit. Independent businesses are so beloved in this part of town that when the buzzing restaurant Superiority Burger – a casual vegetarian diner regarded as one of the best restaurants in the city – opened on Avenue A in 2023, its cocktail menu was illustrated with advertisements paying tribute to local businesses, including Casey Rubber Stamps (run by an Irish man, John Casey, who set up in 1979 and moved the business from the West Village in 2003), Mast Books, and Academy Records. Recently, another new Irish business opened up on East 7th Street, Mary O’s Irish Soda Bread Shop. Close by on St Mark’s Place is Bar Bua, once Sin É, the Irish-owned cafe where Jeff Buckley held his famous early gigs.
When customers are pottering around Irving Green, Doyle says she will eventually tell them the shop is Irish-owned and that more than half the stock is brought in from Ireland.
“I’m not joking, I’d say 98 per cent of the time they’ll have a story about studying in Ireland, or that they’ve been to Ireland, or are planning to go.
“It’s cool to be Irish at the moment,” Doyle says, but also “the Irish thing always sells over here ... There’s always a warmth to a conversation when you bring up Ireland. We have that draw with people.”
Doyle has identified various criteria for what sells. Anything with Guinness ticks the box, and anything small that fits in the average Manhattan home. “Size is important. People are living in small apartments.” Prints by the Dublin photographer Ciaran Tully, who emigrated to New York in 1990, are popular too, especially his photograph of the nearby Immigrant Bar. “People come in to buy that if they had their first date there, or met their partner there.”
Doyle originally came to the city on a three-month internship. Before returning to Ireland, she attended a networking event at Glucksman House, NYU’s centre for Irish and Irish-American studies. “I met an Irish guy who had a software company and said if I wanted to get into tech, they had sales positions. Next thing I was processing a visa with them. I moved back April 2008, and stayed with that company for 8½ years. I dipped back to Ireland at one point, but it didn’t stick. I was back [in New York] again around 2017.” Doyle was running a sales team when she “had a inkling that I wanted to do something else. The creative side of me was calling. My outlet for design was small projects in friends apartments. I renovated an apartment a few years ago.”
Although she now lives in Gramercy, East Village was home for years, bar a stint in Chelsea. “East side is more me. I think maybe because I’m a northsider ... I grew up in Artane, Dublin 5. I’m from just behind Killester Church.”
Doyle is inspired by Irish design shops, and the products sold in them. “We’re one of the best in the world at these products. That’s what I wanted to bring to New York. All over Ireland, stores in places like Dingle or Sneem, just beautiful gift stores, ceramics, pottery, there’s such a cosy homeyness. We have some of the best products and homeware stores in the world.”
While she stocks plenty of newer designers, she has also noticed how younger people “still love and gravitate towards older brands. They love a Foxford blanket in their house. It’s important to Irish people to have those pieces.”
The tariffs are a snag. Since the de minimis exception (initially meaning anything under $800) was removed by Donald Trump in August, Doyle, like anyone importing from Ireland, faces an additional 15 per cent increase.
“All I think about is Christmas right now. I want to get to a point where I’m seeing customers come back in the door who have been here earlier in the year. I want to grow the customer base. I’m finalising the website. I want to evolve the products where we bring more into the store but also seasonly change.”
She looks around her beautiful shop. “I want it to be one of the most successful stores on the block for the holidays.”
Irish businesses in East Village
Casey Rubber Stamps
Casey Rubber Stamps is a rubber stamp workshop and shop on East 11th Street, beloved of local businesses, graphic designers, artists, and anyone who needs a stamp made. Equal parts charming and chaotic, the business slogan is “We may be cool, but we will never be hip”. Casey makes stamps the old way, from a negative, plate, and a mould, using real rubber set on a wooden block. Casey sells countless stamp designs as well as making bespoke commissions.
Mary O’s Irish Soda Bread Shop
Mary O’Halloran opened Mary O’s Irish Soda Bread Shop in November 2024, having spent the pandemic making soda bread scones when lockdown closed her pub on nearby Avenue A (also called Mary O’s). “There’s no line!” a scone-hunting TikToker exclaimed in a recent video. The shop has become characterised by large queues thanks to the only thing on the menu – scones – becoming a citywide hit. The scones come with a healthy dose of Kerrygold butter (more of a slice than a spread) and home-made blackberry jam. The shop is open Thursday to Sunday from 7am until the scones sell out.
