In watchmaking, “complications”, highly valued for their craftsmanship, are intricate functions that go beyond just telling the time in hours, minutes and seconds. In the same way, Joanne Hynes’ complicated fashion designs go far beyond just clothing. Everything she does comes from deep thought and consideration to the point of obsession, making her signature strong and identifiable as a designer. There is always something unexpected, some exuberant detail or embellishment. And there is always an explanation, a raison d’être.
Her latest collection marks a successful 10-year relationship with Dunnes Stores, spanning 20 collections, from which she kept “what was memorable or important or something that would have future stories”. We are meeting in the Atrium at Trinity College Dublin, where her exhibition Always the Weird Girl took place last month, featuring her latest collection along with pieces from her extensive archive.
“I work on instinct, 100 per cent, what is around me, on the floor, on the table. There is no formula. I am always interested in playing around with aesthetics and I have always experimented with newness,” she explains in her usual thoughtful, deliberate way, as she shows me a working patchworked toile as an example of her creative practice.
Included in the display was one of her very first designs after graduating from Central St Martins in London – an Aran sweater studded with salvaged Waterford chandelier crystals. Crystal also featured in a waistcoat she once made for Daphne Guinness, one of her many fans. Others include Lady Gaga, CMAT and more recently Katie Taylor.
READ MORE
The 14 pieces in her latest collection – in limited editions, like all those for Dunnes – are not quite as colourful as usual, another deliberate choice, though there are bold chartreuse velvet opera coats, pink collars and cuffs, fake fur panelling and silvered blue shirts and pom-pom decor. Shapes are pared back, but the material combinations are more structured and allow for more elaborate surface applications.
Sequins, mirror embroidery and chain embellishment reflect the light – a tailored grey trousersuit has bold sequinned sleeves, a shirt is panelled with triangular glass motifs, and she demonstrates how sequinned jeans can be rubbed one way to get a different colour. An intricate black top made from laser-cut nylon on mesh is layered with green velvet chainmail, while a pinstriped jacket has pinched and draped organza sleeves with storm flaps at the front and back. Knitwear is jacquard Lurex, and waistbands are elasticated.
“I am thinking about something that will last through the seasons and yet is what I want to wear today – what a woman wants to wear with reference to the past,” she says. “I am such a nostalgia freak, so this is also about looking back and it felt complete. I always feel grounded in clothes that are big and complicated.”
A standout piece is her two-in-one skirt with a crinoline underneath, attached with a silver skater chain and worn with a PU black jacket with faux marabou shoulders. “Each piece must be timeless and necessary when it’s viewed on its own in isolation. And it must bring joy.”
A mother of six living in Wicklow, Hynes has also been working for the past four years on a book about grief, after a stillbirth in October 2013. Writing it was a means of processing the experience in her own way, and she has already completed 140,000 words. In November she will be taking part in a residency at the Museum of Literature Ireland with an exhibition of the book and mementoes and objects associated with the experience.
Three years ago at the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, her creative practices were explored in an exhibition entitled What We Carry With Us, which she described as an ongoing dialogue with clothing, writing and self, arguing that “the process of writing and the act of making have similarities”.
Ultimately whatever she does is uniquely personal, and “not about what I should do, but what I should not do”.
