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Welcome back to our post-analysis episode of Desert Island Dress.  Every other week, we take a moment to reflect on the stories and choices shared in the main conversation and pull on one of the threads that caught our attention.    ✨ Stay connected with Desert Island Dress:   📸 Instagram: ⁠⁠@desert_island_dress⁠⁠    🌐 Website: www.desert-island-dress.com   💌 Share your favourite episode of Desert Island Dress with a friend  For more stories, news and updates — including our first live show in Copenhagen with the Embassy of Ireland and recently published articles in RTÉ Brainstorm, visit: www.desert-island-dress.com

This week’s guest is painter Carl Hickey. If you are not familiar, Carl’s work is celebrated for capturing those everyday, instantly recognisable moments in life. Recent paintings have depicted two guys sporting their much-coveted 3D glasses, waiting for the solar eclipse back in August; or two lads e-scooting through Dublin city; or his mam getting her nails painted by her next-door neighbour outside her home in Clondalkin during the summer heatwave.  Speaking of heat, we recorded this chat back in the summer. The studio was sweltering, so fair play to Carl for getting through the full hour in the extra-hot seat, with not a window to open!  Through his four items - which he had understood needed to be something old, something new and something borrowed, but the choices worked anyway - we get a great sense of Carl and his easy-going nature. We hear how he almost didn’t bother applying for college, before going on to apply himself to such an extent that he graduated with a first-class honours degree from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) here in Dublin.  There’s a lovely theme running through the conversation about the significance of ‘the suit’ in a young man’s life, and, in a way, how men gradually grow into it. At first, it’s something to almost play around with, dressing up, experimenting with the clothes, until one day he will find himself wearing a full suit, and it will be of no particular significance at all. He will have simply grown into it.   Elsewhere, our conversation takes us from Guineys, a longstanding Dublin retail institution on Talbot Street, to gangster grandads in trench coats, to the remoteness of Ballinskelligs, where Carl seems more fazed by the challenge of keeping a fire lit in his country lodgings than by anything Dublin's busy streets can throw at him.  Carl was heading out to meet friends straight after chatting with us, and he strikes us as exactly the kind of person you’d love to have at your table on a night out.  Our thanks to Carl for keeping Desert Island Dress on his podcast list for 2026!  _____________________________________________ ✨ Stay connected with Desert Island Dress:   📸 Instagram: ⁠⁠@desert_island_dress⁠⁠    🌐 Website: www.desert-island-dress.com   💌 Share your favourite episode of Desert Island Dress with a friend  For more stories, news and updates — including our first live show in Copenhagen with the Embassy of Ireland and recently published articles in RTÉ Brainstorm, visit: www.desert-island-dress.com

Welcome back to our post-analysis episode of Desert Island Dress.  Every other week, we take a moment to reflect on the stories and choices shared in the main conversation and pull on one of the threads that caught our attention.    ✨ Stay connected with Desert Island Dress:   📸 Instagram: ⁠⁠@desert_island_dress⁠⁠    🌐 Website: www.desert-island-dress.com   💌 : Share your favourite episode of Desert Island Dress with a friend  For more stories, news and updates — including our first live show in Copenhagen with the Embassy of Ireland and recently published articles in RTÉ Brainstorm, visit: www.desert-island-dress.com

Today, we are honoured to welcome Caoilfhionn Gallagher to Desert Island Dress.  Caoilfhionn is a barrister and has worked in London at the renowned Doughty Street Chambers for over 20 years, alongside similarly excellent human rights barristers such as Amal Clooney, fighting for justice — particularly for those who do not have the voice or reach to advocate for themselves. Her next steps include founding an independent organisation to continue this important work. Even after talking with Caoilfhionn for just an hour, we came away humbled by what was on our own plates, as she casually shared just some of the items on her calendar for that week alone! She is a force of nature: so articulate, insightful and hugely knowledgeable, while also being incredibly self-aware and introspective.  As Katriona rightly points out, to hear ‘Imposter Syndrome’ come up is not where you’d expect this conversation to go. Yet Caoilfhionn brilliantly illustrates how legacy systems and organisations can create worlds that signal to you that you do not belong.  She describes an encounter at a stuffy legal outfitter while hiring the ceremonial attire she needed to become a senior barrister — a highly prestigious appointment. When she asked for the prescribed patent-buckled shoes in her petite shoe size, the outfitter sniffed that they only stocked them from size 6 upwards. I thought this was a simple yet highly illustrative example of the social cues we might interpret as telling us that we don’t belong in certain spaces. We literally don’t fit in their shoes.  Each of Caoilfhionn’s four items leads to beautiful conversations that stretch from the personal — including teenage memories, family love and loss — through to accents and the Irish and British social class systems, and the power of a T-shirt to advocate for human rights.  It’s all here, told through the wonderfully worded stories of our second guest of the series, Caoilfhionn Gallagher.    ✨ Stay connected with Desert Island Dress:   📸 Instagram: ⁠⁠@desert_island_dress⁠⁠    🌐 Website: www.desert-island-dress.com   💌 Share your favourite episode of Desert Island Dress with a friend  For more stories, news and updates — including our first live show in Copenhagen with the Embassy of Ireland and recently published articles in RTÉ Brainstorm, visit: www.desert-island-dress.com

Welcome back to our post-analysis episode of Desert Island Dress.  Every other week, we take a moment to reflect on the stories and choices shared in the main conversation and pull on one of the threads that caught our attention.    ✨ Stay connected with Desert Island Dress:   📸 Instagram: ⁠⁠@desert_island_dress⁠⁠    🌐 Website: www.desert-island-dress.com   💌 Share your favourite episode of Desert Island Dress with a friend  For more stories, news and updates — including our first live show in Copenhagen with the Embassy of Ireland and recently published articles in RTÉ Brainstorm, visit: www.desert-island-dress.com

And we are back! It’s been a slightly longer break than expected since Series 4, but we are delighted to be back, and we think we have a really great lineup of guests to take to the island this time around. To open the series, we are welcoming a person who has been on Katriona’s wish list since we kicked off this project – artist, designer, sculptor and creative Richard Malone.  I could list the many and varied accolades Richard has been awarded to date, and I will, just for some context for those who are not familiar with him – although my sense of Richard is that these awards do not define him, and he seems to move on to his next artistic endeavour without seeking external validation. But anyhow, for context, I’ve hand-selected just a few.  He started his creative career in fashion; his entire graduate collection was picked up by Brown Thomas in Dublin, and in 2020 he won the International Woolmark Prize (former winners include Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld). He went on to focus more on sculpture than fashion, and his work has been displayed at the Royal Academy in London. You can also find Richard’s work in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the V&A Museum in London and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.  He also curated an exhibition titled Making and Momentum: In Conversation with Eileen Gray, celebrating modernism in Ireland and the influence of Irish craftsmanship globally. The exhibition concluded in his hometown in Wexford, Ireland – and from our conversation today, it is clear that Richard’s sense of provenance and connection to his homeplace is a huge influence on his work and on how he experiences working within the creative industry.  At the time of our interview, earlier this summer, Richard was about to announce a new commission – which we now know is a sculpture installation for the Council of the EU’s Justus Lipsius and Europa buildings in Brussels, as Ireland takes on the EU Presidency this year. The piece is titled Cuimhne agus Séadchomhartha   (Memory and Monument), and we’ve put a link to a Guardian article below that shares an image of the installation, along with an interview with Richard.  For someone who has achieved so much recognition, Richard seems consciously detached from external validation and prioritises preserving his native social experiences and sensibilities to inform his work, rather than assimilating into stereotypical tropes of what a creative should be.  To this end, Richard’s four choices for the island led to such interesting considerations around accents and working-class tastes, along with social class differences and privilege in affluent art schools and London lifestyles.  This is a thought-provoking episode, and it was worth the wait to finally welcome Richard Malone to Desert Island Dress!  --------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard Malone's discusses his latest sculpture installation for the Council of the EU, as Ireland takes on the EU presidency this year: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/jul/09/richard-malone-ireland-eu-presidency-council ✨ Stay connected with Desert Island Dress:   📸 Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠@desert_island_dress⁠⁠⁠    🌐 Website: ⁠www.desert-island-dress.com⁠   💌 : share your favourite episode of Desert Island Dress with a friend  For more stories, news and updates — including our first live show in Copenhagen with the Embassy of Ireland and recently published articles in RTÉ Brainstorm, visit: desert-island-dress.com

Welcome back to our post-analysis episode of Desert Island Dress. Every other week, we take a moment to reflect on the stories and choices shared in the main conversation and pull on one of the threads that caught our attention.   🎨 This series features hand-drawn sketches of each of our guests by artist Louise Boughton @louiseboughton_  ✨ Stay connected with Desert Island Dress:   📸 Instagram: @desert_island_dress   🌐 Website: www.desertislanddress.com  💌 Our ask this series: share your favourite episode with a friend, or follow and subscribe on your podcast app — it really helps us grow!

Welcome to our final guest episode for Series 4 of Desert Island Dress with Marie Kelly, a writer whose work moves effortlessly between fashion, culture, art and everyday life.   Beginning her career in London before returning to Ireland, Marie has spent more than two decades telling stories across luxury magazines and premium brands, with clients including Victoria Beckham, Stella McCartney and previous guest of Desert Island Dress, goldsmith, Nigel O’Reilly.   Most recently, Marie has co-founded Só Consulting with Gavin Manley, a luxury consultancy rooted in the Irish idea of só: a state of ease, comfort and contentment, defined not by status or spectacle, but by moments of genuine connection.   In this episode, Marie brings a thoughtful, considered perspective to her choices. As you’ll hear, each piece is carefully chosen, with her flair for storytelling illuminating the deeper meaning behind every item.   We are delighted to welcome Marie Kelly to Desert Island Dress.

Welcome back to our post-analysis episode of Desert Island Dress.  Every other week, we take a moment to reflect on the stories and choices shared in the main conversation and pull on one of the threads that caught our attention.    🎨 This series features hand-drawn sketches of your podcast hosts Dee & Katriona, and each of our guests by artist Louise Boughton @louiseboughton_  ✨ Stay connected with Desert Island Dress:   📸 Instagram: ⁠⁠@desert_island_dress⁠⁠    🌐 Website: ⁠⁠www.desertislanddress.com⁠⁠   💌 Our ask this series: share your favourite episode with a friend, or follow and subscribe on your podcast app — it really helps us grow!   For more stories, news and updates — including our first live show in Copenhagen with the Embassy of Ireland and recently published articles in RTÉ Brainstorm — visit ⁠⁠desertislanddress.com⁠⁠.

Today, we are thrilled to share a conversation with someone whom both Katriona and I have admired for many years in our academic lives. When studying and teaching fashion, her work has always been a guiding force. She is the sociologist, feminist thinker, and cultural scholar, Professor Angela McRobbie.  Our discussion with Angela travels across countries and decades, bringing us into the creative and political energy of 1970s Glasgow, the feminist debates and vintage-hunting culture of Birmingham, and the vibrant artistic worlds she later encountered in London and Berlin. Along the way, she reflects on how clothing becomes a way of thinking - a way of positioning oneself intellectually, politically, and personally.  It’s a conversation that mirrors Angela’s lifelong commitment to understanding how what we wear both shapes us and reflects the worlds we move through.  And truly, our own interest in the stories behind the clothes we wear has been deeply informed by reading culture theorists like Angela McRobbie. In many ways, Desert Island Dress is inspired by pioneering researchers such as herself, which makes it especially meaningful to share this episode today.  We hope you enjoy listening as much as we did.

Welcome back to our post-analysis episode of Desert Island Dress.  Every other week, we take a moment to reflect on the stories and choices shared in the main conversation and pull on one of the threads that caught our attention.    🎨 This series features hand-drawn sketches of your podcast hosts Dee & Katriona, and each of our guests by artist Louise Boughton @louiseboughton_  ✨ Stay connected with Desert Island Dress:   📸 Instagram: ⁠⁠@desert_island_dress⁠⁠    🌐 Website: ⁠⁠www.desertislanddress.com⁠⁠   💌 Our ask this series: share your favourite episode with a friend, or follow and subscribe on your podcast app - it really helps us grow!   For more stories, news and updates — including our first live show in Copenhagen with the Embassy of Ireland and recently published articles in RTÉ Brainstorm - visit ⁠⁠desertislanddress.com⁠⁠.

Hello Desert Island Dress listeners, and welcome. We hope you are enjoying the series so far, and today we are so very delighted to share this week’s guest with you – Irish musician, singer, and songwriter, Liam Ó Maonlaí.    My first recollections of Liam were as the lead singer of Irish band, Hothouse Flowers – I was probably about 9 or 10 years old, and we’d have the anthem ‘Don’t Go’ blaring on our family road trips from Dublin to Mayo. This, interchanged with The Saw Doctors, helped keep us upbeat as we’d crawl through inevitable bottleneck towns like Kinnegad in the midlands of Ireland.   Listening back to those songs, brings me straight back to that time, the journey, the excitement to see Mayo relatives, the chaos of a jam-packed car, the expectation of the summer holidays ahead. The power of music transports me back, but also, looking at the music videos and posters of Liam with the band, and the aesthetic of the late 1980s/early 1990s also has that power to transport me – I am remembering older kids from my neighbourhood I haven’t thought of in years that dressed similarly, just snapshots of memories – the way they’d walk, what they wore, the waistcoat over a paisley shirt, long shoulder length hair, sideburns ... maybe they’d flick their hair just as Liam characteristically did, and still does! The power of clothing can be just as powerful as music to tap into the senses and memories.   The day before we were to record this episode, I attended a friend’s launch of a short docu-film, sharing stories of displaced people in Ireland. Coincidentally, and unknown to me at the time, Liam features in the film, and he arrived to speak at the event. He sat down beside me, and I took one look down at his light blue Crocs, paired with a dark suit, and I quietly thought to myself, we would have a great chat the next day! And that we did – Liam was so generous with his time, and his storytelling, and there’s a really beautiful moment in the conversation, when the sun just brilliantly shone in through the window for a moment, highlighting the star, the Réalta, that is, Liam O Maonlaí.     🎨 This series features hand-drawn sketches of each of our guests by artist Louise Boughton @louiseboughton_ ✨ Stay connected with Desert Island Dress: 📸 Instagram: ⁠⁠@desert_island_dress⁠⁠ 🌐 Website: ⁠⁠www.desertislanddress.com⁠⁠ ⭐ Don’t forget to follow, rate & review the podcast — it really helps more people find us. 💌 And if you're enjoying Desert Island Dress, please do share your favourite episode with a friend!

Welcome back to our post-analysis episode of Desert Island Dress. Every other week, we take a moment to reflect on the stories and choices shared in the main conversation and pull on one of the threads that caught our attention.   ✨ Stay connected with Desert Island Dress:  📸 Instagram: ⁠⁠@desert_island_dress⁠⁠   🌐 Website: ⁠⁠www.desertislanddress.com⁠⁠  💌 Our ask this series: share your favourite episode with a friend, or follow and subscribe on your podcast app — it really helps us grow!  For more stories, news and updates — including our first live show in Copenhagen with the Embassy of Ireland and recently published articles in RTÉ Brainstorm — visit ⁠⁠desertislanddress.com⁠⁠.

This week, we are joined by Dana Thomas, journalist, author, and one of fashion’s most insightful voices. Based in Paris, Dana has spent her career exploring how the fashion industry really works, from sustainability and supply chains to the inner worlds of luxury and design.  We first came to Dana’s work through her writing — I discovered her book Fashionopolis, while teaching sustainability on a Sociology of Fashion module, and Katriona through Dana’s excellent books, Gods and Kings, and Deluxe: How Luxury Lost It’s Lustre - when teaching a luxury fashion principles module.  It’s a testament to Dana’s extraordinary range — a writer who understands fashion from every angle.  Today, she reflects on the garments that have accompanied her through a life immersed in fashion, storytelling, and change.   Here’s Dana Thomas on Desert Island Dress.  🎨 This series features hand-drawn sketches of each of our guests by artist Louise Boughton @louiseboughton_ ✨ Stay connected with Desert Island Dress: 📸 Instagram: ⁠@desert_island_dress⁠ 🌐 Website: ⁠www.desertislanddress.com⁠ ⭐ Don’t forget to follow, rate & review the podcast — it really helps more people find us. 💌 And if you're enjoying Desert Island Dress, please do share your favourite episode with a friend!

Welcome back to our post-analysis episode of Desert Island Dress. Every other week, we take a moment to reflect on the stories and choices shared in the main conversation and pull on one of the threads that caught our attention.   ✨ Stay connected with Desert Island Dress:  📸 Instagram: ⁠@desert_island_dress⁠   🌐 Website: ⁠www.desertislanddress.com⁠  💌 Our ask this series: share your favourite episode with a friend, or follow and subscribe on your podcast app — it really helps us grow!  For more stories, news and updates — including our first live show in Copenhagen with the Embassy of Ireland and recently published articles in RTÉ Brainstorm — visit ⁠desertislanddress.com⁠.