The Tweed Project: Cloud Collars and Craic

For over a decade, the Galway atelier The Tweed Project has been reworking indigenous Irish cloth into bombers, kaftans and cloud collars. Founders Aoibheann McNamara and Triona Lillis on rebellion, colour, and the freedom of making by hand on the Wild Atlantic coast.

On Ireland's Wild Atlantic coast, The Tweed Project reworks indigenous Irish cloth into bombers, kaftans and cloud collars: slow fashion with craic, colour and rebellion.

Some clothes ask to be taken seriously. The Tweed Project would rather make you smile first, then look twice. One recent piece pairs a great soft "cloud" collar with tassels from Molly & Son, with a matching alice band waiting alongside, ready to lift a look from jeans to a full dress in a single move. It is beautiful and a little bit silly, which is precisely the point.

For over a decade, the Galway atelier has been quietly, and sometimes loudly, rebelling against the ordinary. Founders Aoibheann McNamara, of the much-loved Ard Bia, and Triona Lillis, a costume designer for Irish screen, began in 2014 with a simple frustration. Ireland made some of the finest cloth in the world, and most of it was being cut into clothes that felt clunky, old school, more heritage costume than living wardrobe. "We were rebelling against the stereotype of how tweed was being designed and worn," says McNamara. So they subverted it: bombers, hoodies and kaftans, modern global shapes married to stunning indigenous fabric.

That instinct to follow the feeling rather than the season still runs the studio. The colour story has wandered from the green and gold-flecked greys of the west coast to bright reds and yellows and, lately, soft creams and blush. Ask what drives the shifts and the answer is refreshingly honest: mood, the weather of a given year (Covid restrictions included), and quite simply what cloth they can lay hands on. The current offering, "Remember Nature," is less a defined collection than a set of ideas being chased in real time. "We have great freedom in what we create and how we put pieces out," she says. "A large part of that is down to how we feel."

Fabric is where the creativity and the constraint meet. Alongside vintage and deadstock finds, they re-run their signature tweed and blankets as a constant thread, the staple everything else hangs off. They commission Irish linen from Emblem Weavers in Wexford for shirts and cooler summer suits. And from Kerry Woollen Mills they buy what McNamara calls "crazy coloured" existing stock, then do something joyful with it: those cloud collars, the tassels, the alice bands. Working with what already exists could read as a limit. In their hands it becomes a licence to play.

The discipline underneath the fun comes, in part, from a restaurant. McNamara sees no great leap from slow food to slow fashion. "It's basically the same. Everything is considered, everything is made in-house." A plate or a piece, the ambition is identical: something meant to last a lifetime, holding feeling and integrity, the antithesis of the generic offerings widening all around us. Look to the old, take your time, produce something deeply authentic. In a house built on that belief, a hand-finished tassel is the whole philosophy, worn on the shoulder.

If there is talk of Irish design having its moment, the view from the Wild Atlantic coast is that the moment was always here. "Being based on the west coast of Ireland has always been a superpower for us," says Lillis. "All our inspiration comes from here." She finds it lovely to see the world now looking back to Ireland for inspiration, and calls it a very exciting time for Irish fashion. McNamara is equally clear that staying small is the entire proposition. Jonathan Anderson may be carrying Irish tweed to a global stage; The Tweed Project carries it in a smaller, more intrinsic way, toward an audience that loves the cloth as much as they do. With Donegal tweed said to be on its way to protected status, much as Harris Tweed is guarded in Scotland, the fabric has never mattered more. Which leaves the two of them exactly where they want to be: on the edge of the Atlantic, making one considered, characterful, faintly mischievous thing at a time.

Model in a dry-stone doorway wearing a white linen tunic and trousers, a beaded veil and a necklace strung with colourful net-wrapped floats.

Two models on rocky ground: one in a fringed red tartan blanket dress and red woven shoes, the other in a pale blue Aran knit vest and checked ruffle-hem skirt over jeans.

Model in woodland wearing a yellow and red checked mohair jumper and matching full skirt, with a yellow pom-pom beret and yellow mules.

Model in mossy woodland in a red and yellow checked puff-sleeve blouse and red cross-strap pinafore skirt with red boots.

Model on a wooden stepladder among currant bushes, wearing a blush ribbed-knit bomber, a striped skirt and a lilac hat.

Couple on the Burren dressed head to toe in yellow: a fringed, tasselled tabard over a white shirt, beside a striped linen skirt, cropped knit and pillbox hat.

Model on a woodland path in a red and yellow checked smock dress and yellow wool turban, a striped mohair blanket draped over both arms.

The Tweed Project: Cloud Collars and Craic

The atelier: The Tweed Project

The Tweed Project founders Aoibheann McNamara and Triona Lillis in their whitewashed Galway atelier, with an

Founded in 2014 by Aoibheann McNamara (the restaurateur behind Galway's Ard Bia) and Triona Lillis (a costume designer for Irish film and television), The Tweed Project is a slow-fashion atelier working only with Irish cloth. Everything is made to order in small batches. Fabrics come from Irish mills and makers, including Donegal tweed from Molly & Son, Irish linen from Emblem Weavers in Wexford, and colourful woollens from Kerry Woollen Mills. Explore the work at thetweedproject.com and on Instagram.