Paul Costelloe

Paul Costelloe is an Irish designer and artist who has been in British and Irish fashion for the last 30 years. His father, a figure in the Irish rainwear market, was originally from Limerick and his mother, an American from New York. He was the youngest of a large family of seven children. In 1979 he married his wife Anne, with whom he, like his parents, has had 7 children. In 1999 he moved from Dublin to London where his designer label is based.^[1]

The Paul Costelloe Label

Originally based in Dublin, but now in the heart of London, Paul Costelloe’s fashion house has developed into a family run business and he continues to be at the helm of his own collections. He was educated at the well-known Catholic school, Blackrock College in Dublin with fellow Irish designer Pauric Sweeney, but left at the age of 16 and worked in a pig factory in the town of Cappoquin in Co. Waterford. Having looked into book-keeping for a short-period of time, a process of elimination left fashion design as the most obvious career choice due to his artistic strengths.

Soon after, in the late 1960s, Paul moved to Paris and trained in the Faubourg Saint Honoré Hautes Coutures boutiques and went on to become design assistant at Jacques Esterel. After a move to Italy where he worked as a designer for the upscale retailer, la Rinascente, Paul shifted across the Atlantic to New York where he experienced working in the burgeoning fashion industry on 7th Avenue. Upon his return to Dublin from the States in 1978, he set up his own independent fashion label in 1979; Paul Costelloe Collections.

The Paul Costelloe label was expanded to the UK in the early 1990s and with it, a new label; Paul Costelloe Dressage. By 1994, the business was established enough to have a flagship store in the prestigious Knightsbridge area of London. The Paul Costelloe name is now well known throughout Ireland, the UK and abroad, with his clothing seen in retailers such as House of Fraser and John Lewis. The number of stand-alone stores has also seen a boom with shops appearing in all the major cities of the UK including Edinburgh, Manchester and Cardiff. In 2000, Costelloe went into partnership with Signature Brands which specialised in the management and development of top fashion brands but this association ended in 2011 and since then Costelloe has been developing his exciting designs independently.

Despite having been quoted as describing his catwalk shows as "just PR" (Mirza, 2008), London Fashion Week has been an intrinsic part of Paul Costelloe ladies wear. He has presented his Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter catwalk collections at London Fashion Week every season for the last 15 years, and has opened the week for the last 6 seasons due to the consistent flare his shows bring. According to the fashion industry journal Drapers, Costelloe's “staying power is beyond dispute” (Mirza, 2008.) The models he has used include Jerry Hall, Caprice and Jodie Kidd.

Customers and Product

Costelloe has described his target customer as an "international, modern woman, aged between 27 and 97. She is discreet; she wants to be seen but not screened” (Costelloe, 2009, www.londonfashionweek.co.uk). It's probably fair to say that this typical target customer is likely to shop with a taste for quality and classic items that look likely to endure the test of time.

Women’s-wear makes up the most important aspect of Costelloe’s label, but in the past few years, Paul has injected his expertise and style into a new menswear line, a home-wear range with Dunnes Stores in Ireland and an optical collection of designer glasses.

Corporate wear has presented Costelloe with the opportunity to offer his services to many large corporations and businesses throughout the UK and the world. He designed the landmark uniform for British Airways which was in use for 12 years from 1992 to 2004. Other airlines include Aer Lingus, Qatar Airways, and Delta Air Lines. He has also designed the uniforms for British Gas, Sainsbury’s supermarkets and the Formula One team, the Orange Arrows.

The Costelloe brand has moreover entered the sporting world as he has designed the uniforms for teams and their relatives. The most prolific of these have been the Ireland Olympic Team uniforms for the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the outfits for the WAGs (Wives and Girlfriends) of the European Ryder Cup Team in 2006 at the K Club (Ireland) and at the Valhalla Golf Club in Kentucky in 2008 and also at Celtic Manor Golf Club (Wales) in 2010. Most recently, Costelloe designed the uniform for the England Women’s Cricket Team who claimed victory in the 2008 Ashes Series against Australia and in the 2009 Cricket World Cup.

In popular culture

In 2010 Costelloe was one of six contemporary, internationally renowned Irish fashion designers featured on a set of Irish postage stamps issued by An Post. The other designers featured were Louise Kennedy, Lainey Keogh, John Rocha, Philip Treacy and Orla Kiely.^[2]

Along with Kennedy, he was a celebrity guest judge for the 2013 final of RTÉ Television's Craft Master show.^[3]

References

External links

• Official website
• Official Menswear Shop
• London Fashion Week profile
• Paul Costelloe at the Fashion Model Directory