Alison Conneely on Finding Healing and Inspiration in Connemara
By Ruth O'Connor
As a fashion designer, Alison Conneely is recognised by her minimal, tailored pieces, which exhibit an attention to detail that is razor-sharp. At the same time, there is a softness there – as seen through her use of fine Italian wool and Irish tweed. Just as the Atlantic wind curves around hard Connemara stone so too are opposing forces congruent in Conneely’s work.
Known for her eponymous fashion label, she has had her fair share of challenges over the past decade, but her return to home soil has meant a healing and a rebirth, personally and professionally. This year looks set to see the Galway native flourish as a designer, collaborator and mentor.
Conneely was producing award-winning collections and securing key fashion stockists when she was involved in a major car accident travelling home to Connemara in 2013. Both her beloved Land Rover Defender and her life were derailed for several years as a result.
Unable to “put herself back together” in the aftermath of the accident, she left Ireland for London where she worked with Fiona Ennis on the Vilshenko brand.
A year later, a conversation with Irish writer Sean O’Reilly prompted her to reconsider her own creative practice, ultimately leading, in 2016, to her first major project post-accident ‘The Shuttle Hive: A Century of Rising Threads’ at the National Museum of Ireland in partnership with Design & Crafts Council Ireland to commemorate the centenary of the 1916 Rising.
Over the past few years, Conneely has lost eight pregnancies – a “necklace of wounds” – which she references in her Substack newsletter Visions, Velvet & Neolithic Winkle-Pickers. “Whilst it broke me apart, it was the beginning of a metamorphosis, I would never be the same again,” she tells me.
“The deeper the suffering, the deeper my desire was to come home to nature and to Connemara – a place to heal my wounds. Now I am very grateful for all that I went through, it helped me grow into myself.”
Having been refused planning permission to build on her family land, Conneely was given the opportunity to purchase a neighbouring house, Orpen Lodge (complete with two plump donkeys), formerly owned by friends Alan and Mary Hobart of Pyms Gallery in Belgravia. Conneely and her partner, a lawyer, split their time between Faul and Portobello, Dublin as they both work in the capital regularly.
“I need the city too, it’s where I go to plug in, charge up and get that electrical current from artists, friends and all that the city has to offer,” she says. “I travel a lot for work to Copenhagen, Helsinki and Stockholm – all made more beautiful as I get to come back home to Connemara and to nature.”
A self-confessed empath, Conneely seems at once a highly practical individual and also a deep thinker, greatly inspired by poetry and literature, art and nature. “On a rural road past a neglected working farm, a string of starlings swooped down from the telephone line into a big limestone pothole filled with water and began basking, diving and splashing in a vision of choreographed motion,” she says. “For me, this is as inspiring as the work of the great mystics, architects, artists and visionaries throughout time.”
Photography by Eilish McCormack
This somewhat bohemian outlook does not however preclude Conneely from action. A recent project undertaken in collaboration with UNFPA, the United Nations agency aimed at improving reproductive and maternal health worldwide, was conceived of in the aftermath of the Repeal referendum, the project “slowly gestating through a global health pandemic and worsening climate crisis”.
Birthed in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US and the crackdown on protests in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini, Conneely began the project in support of global campaigns for reproductive justice. “For me, this is where agency begins,” she says. “I felt I needed to contribute in some small way to the violence being unleashed on (mostly) women around the world. Staying silent is no longer an option for me.”
The project, entitled Hail Thee: We Come in Reveries of Change was a collaboration with Alannah Davey, Dolorosa de la Cruz, Rachel Fallon, Rosa Farahini, Jahnavi Inniss, Alice Maher, Paula McGloin, Jesse Jones, Hina Khan and Isabel Nolan. Invoking ancient myths, poetic imaginings, native American wisdom and the experience of migrants, the project also inspired the closing event of DCCI Irish Design Week and was the recipient of two IDI Irish Design Awards in 2023.
For Conneely, such acknowledgment from her industry peers is important, yes, but particularly in the context of her work being used as a medium for social change. “The business of fashion is extremely challenging so moments of recognition are good for the soul,” she says. “But specifically relating to the IDI awards that I won in November the criteria in which they judged the awards was, for me, more important than the awards themselves.”
“It is not easy growing up female,” she continues. “I would like to think things are better for younger generations but I’m not so sure. It is a constant battle to ward off the debilitating structures built from centuries of patriarchal capitalism. No matter the month, or decade, or century, the female body continues to be a battleground. Kim Kardashian’s recent offering with SKIMS, the Nipple Bra, just makes me want to cry.
All this bull**** takes us away from truly living in and enjoying our bodies as extraordinary vessels in which we can realise the greatest gifts of being human.”
Alongside her award-winning design work, for the past six months Conneely has been developing a mentorship programme which she hopes to roll out this year - good news for any creative looking to garner insight from this seasoned professional.
“My experience as a designer, creative director, curator, stylist and educator has given me an overarching perspective on the industry,” she says. “I want to help draw from any fledgling designer their unique vision – to help them develop and grow and to see real creativity as an extension of the self, an extension of the soul.”