Robyn Lynch Infuses Contemporary Menswear With Irish Heritage
Effortlessly tapping into multiple veins of Irish nostalgia, designer Robyn Lynch creates enduring menswear for any time.
Robyn Lynch, NCAD graduate, has brought the aesthetics of Irish suburbia and seaside not only to London, where she currently resides, but also to Japan where her brand is stocked in several stores. If you’re a fan of British streetwear brand Palace, you’d be a fan of Lynch’s oscillating skate- and school-inspired silhouettes embedded with the colloquial tones of Ireland. The designer’s signature colour-blocking and unconventional blend of fabrics illustrate an ode to her home while incorporating other symbolic facets of the Irish experience past and present.
The monochromatic models in Lynch’s shows parallel Jacquemus or Yeezy collections; creating a deconstructed Irish flag. Similar to these French and American styled garments, Lynch’s colour-matching pieces create a sense of utopian existence rooted in timelessness. The asymmetrical knits and nylon shorts featured in her early collections could exist in the 1970s or the 2070s. Similar to Hannah Ennis, the Irish/German fashion designer who was recently featured in FAC, Lynch subverts traditional shapes of menswear through asymmetry. By doing so, the designer achieves a familiar yet contemporary sentiment surrounding her clothes, connecting her wearers to the past in real time.
The designer seamlessly blends quintessential Irish textiles — woolly Aran sweater knitwears and zipped tracksuits — creating an enduring yet very 21st century expression of Irish masculinity. In the most sophisticated, innovative mode, Lynch’s garments and runway looks are the best parts of an updated school gym uniform or the wool sweaters lined up at the bar during a Sunday match. In an interview with ORDRE, Lynch speaks to this, saying: “I take my inspiration from interview footage of care-free, boy-next-door Irish boys in the 80s and 90s, who have just thrown on their clothes.” This channelled effortlessness runs as a consistent, appealing motif throughout her collections.
Lynch’s Instagram (@robynlynchireland) emulates a box of keepsakes more than a gridded digital platform. The account’s contents show a combination of impeccably shot studio photos of her collections, interspersed with inklings of inspiration. A short video from the RTE Archives, for instance, shows an old television clip advertising a motorized, mobile barstool. Before this post sit three undated polaroids from pre-2000. Various men sit lined up with pints in these photos, dressed in bold green, white and orange apparel. Going even further back, to Lynch’s first posts in 2017, most of which are captioned with “research,” one can see the references she’s been drawing on. This includes a multifaceted range of media: old schoolboy photos in rugby, kit, images of martyred saints, old polaroids of vans in front of familiar semi-detached Irish suburbia.
The promotional images for Lynch’s third collection draw on this mixed media research. Models are seamlessly photoshopped onto John Hinde postcards from the 1950s & 60s. Lynch’s garments don’t clash with the landscapes from decades ago though, but rather seem to fit right in whether it be Donegal, Dublin City at Night, or Connemara. This bodes well with the press release from Lynch’s second show with Fashion East, a space in London which champions emerging designers during London Fashion Week each year. The SS2020 collection is described as tapping into “a study of pleasure before the filters of social media,” when Irish kids spent the summer in Ireland before budget airlines existed. Lynch says: “[t]his carefree nature is something that I’m always drawn to.” Holidays are expressed by the materiality of the garments, such as the knit and nylon hybrids which emulate the often-drizzly reality of an Irish summer which requires layered outfits.
Debuting on her Instagram this past January, Lynch’s most recent collection draws a parallel between her signature knits, track pants, and hard-bottom loafers and the early 2000s. Lynch’s website (robynlynch.co.uk) offers a synopsis of these AW2020 garments. Immersion into the landscape of Inis Oirr, an Irish island with a population of 260, influenced the collaborative motif present in the collection. “When you step back there, it’s like time stops,” says Lynch, who spent time there while creating the collection. “It’s these young lads and these older men, living by their own rules. That’s what I love about clothes, how they can tell stories about the way we live.” This theme of stories is explored both aesthetically — through texture and cut — as well as visually through the garments. Teletext presents Robyn Lynch’s name in all caps and lines of Irish language text run along the torsos and limbs of the models, coating them in the early internet age. This informational typography indicates how, while the mode of our story-telling has changed, the art of storytelling intrinsic to Irish character hasn’t. Through veins of tailored silhouettes and languid leisurewear, Lynch effortlessly taps into multiple veins of Irish nostalgia, pre- and post-internet, creating enduring menswear for any time.
Check out Robyn Lynch’s Instagram and float over to her website for more of her latest projects.
Emma O’Regan-Reidy
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