Úna Burke discusses sustainability and inclusivity in fashion
Sustainability and inclusivity are strong buzzwords in the fashion industry nowadays. The age of the stick-thin supermodel is over, and the time of new wardrobes every season is slowly passing us by. But for Roscommon designer, Úna Burke, sustainable fashion that includes people of all shapes and sizes, has always been the brand. The local woman’s leather designs have gone global and it all began here in county Roscommon.
Úna grew up in Knockvicar where her parents ran their Georgian home as a guesthouse, overlooking Lough Key. Her mother was a Home Economics teacher and her father a farmer and, as she put it herself, “a serial entrepreneur” – something that instilled quite a strong entrepreneurial streak in her.
Combine that with her mother’s handiness at crafts, her grandmother’s love of leather handbags and gift for upholstering furniture, and a tradition of shoemaking in the family, and it isn’t hard to see where the foundation for Úna’s own talents lies.
“Mam taught us loads of crafts when I was growing up, so that was the good grounding. Dad’s father was a cobbler and there was a history of several generations of shoemakers before him as well. So I guess I was surrounded by nature and creativity,” Úna explained.
“I remember my granny coming and tacking the upholstery fabrics onto the furniture. So even the hardware that I’m using in the making of my leather work, all came from that kind of exposure. So yeah, I would say the leather work and craft is just in the blood, coming from both sides of the family.”
Helping her dad on the farm was also a big part of Úna’s upbringing. Spending time with the sheep and cows gave her “a very all-round knowledge of the life of the animal and the skin and the appreciation of not throwing away the raw material that is leather”.
“It all informs my work and it genuinely influences my decision from a sustainability point of view,” said Úna, “I don’t waste anything and I make sure to hold onto what gets off-cut from what I’m making, and make smaller products from those.
“I think what was handed on is a set of values. I think that’s what it comes down to. There are good core values that I don’t know why everybody in the world doesn’t have. And it’s like the sustainability hype these days and slow fashion. I think we already had that here in Roscommon, it’s just practicality really, isn’t it? They just have a name for it now but there were always people doing it, and just not going on about it.”
Those values certainly shot Úna to the world stage in fashion, with her high-quality, sustainable leather pieces appearing in the Hunger Games movies. They’ve also been worn by the likes of Rihanna, Lady Gaga, and were featured in Taylor Swift’s music video for Bad Blood, where they were worn by Cindy Crawford and Ellen Pompeo.
“That (Bad Blood) was quite an exciting project. I think we sent about 30 different options to them for them to style on whoever it worked for. They had, I think about 10 or 12 different strong female celebrity characters playing these different variations of who the woman is,” Úna recalled.
“I still have those pieces and I’ve exhibited them recently. When I’m doing different events, I’ll bring them and people can hold something that’s been worn by Rihanna and that’s been worn by Cindy Crawford, which is really nice.
“I did a Meet the Maker event recently down in Newcastle West and customers could come in and try on pieces that have been worn by celebrities, which is fairly unattainable in this world. It was quite nice to offer that opportunity so freely to people.”
While it all sounds incredibly glamorous, with movie commissions, celebrities, trips to Paris Fashion Week, Úna was quick to reveal that her daily uniform in the studio is “quilted overalls”.
“Like farmer overalls, because they’re just so warm for the studio. Because your body gets cold, your hands get cold and you can’t do the nimble work. So it’s all practicality here. And I’m down on all fours, cutting skins up into straps of leather, so it’s far from glamour,” she laughed.
“And then you go put your game face on and you do the Meet the Maker events, and you show up at trade fairs and you sell, sell, sell. Then you get on the computer and you set up your website. And Emmett, my other half, is in the business with me. He joined the business in 2014, and he does the administrative side of things and the accounts and the press events and exhibition stuff.”
It’s all go, she said, but Úna enjoys the work and her collection includes smaller pieces such as cuffs, belts, bracelets or chokers, to larger items like harnesses, corsets, bodices, skirts and bustiers.
“I like making the big pieces because I suppose they’re the most theatrical and dramatic and complex. And I feel like those pieces demonstrate best the maximum of my creative capabilities,” she explained.
“And so it’s nice when people appreciate something like that enough to commission it. But then also it’s nice when people come on a little journey as a new customer, and start by wearing small bracelets and get braver and braver and then start getting maybe brave enough to wear one of the belts and the small handbags. Each of them, I feel, has a different kind of customer.
“And a different, I suppose, type of hero. That’s the way I like to think of the customers, that we’re all our own heroes and that we all can wear these little pieces as kind of our own private armour – everyday pieces to just boost you a little bit and reward you for, I suppose, survival more than anything.
“Because there’s so many different types of survivors in the world. There’s the quiet ones who don’t go on about the daily difficulties. And I picture the bracelets being for those nice quiet ones, and then for people that are a little bit braver, the bigger pieces. We’ve got one particular customer in London – a couple of customers actually – who have just started out with smaller pieces. And then I see them blossoming and becoming braver and more openly confident over the years, and so much so that they’ll end up wearing the bigger shoulder pieces.
“Actually, there’s more and more people in Ireland as well, buying the shoulder pieces. And I’m really, really proud of that, about how brave they are and that they get really, really complimented all the time. They’re not pieces for the faint-hearted or the wall flower.”
Customers have even told Úna that they feel “really empowered” while wearing some of her more daring pieces – something that brings her a sense of pride in her work and in her unique creations.
“There’s the storylines behind the collection and behind the whole essence of the brand,” she said.
“I saw my mam fight tooth and nail for survival, when I was a kid, all through her life basically. She had rheumatoid arthritis and her body was just failing and failing and failing, and still she would find the silver lining and she would find the positives in all the negatives. She fought on and she inspired others, and she was just incredible.
“She was such an inspiration and she taught me to be a survivor, and she taught me to fight back and fight through the tough stuff. And so that energy is put into each piece that I make and that is within the brand. So hopefully that energy can translate from me to the piece, to the wearer. And I know maybe that’s a crazy idea, but the world is made up of energy, isn’t it?”
‘Inclusivity’ is another buzz word in the fashion industry and, much like ‘sustainability’, it is something that Úna has always strived to achieve in her work.
“The way that I build the body pieces especially, is that I work on the mannequin and I build them in a 3D form, nearly like a milliner works, using the body as the form and building pieces in a very 3D sort of way, rather than doing a flat pattern and hoping it works then when you hang it on the body,” she said.
“So being a woman, I’m conscious of how a woman feels and what parts of their body are going to feel, and how women’s bodies evolve as well over time. I’ve just had two kids within the last four or five years, so things like adjustability of belts are important. Because they’re expensive pieces, I would never expect somebody to stay the same size for the rest of their life.
“And so every piece comes with multiple sizing straps or it’s adjustable at different areas of the body, for different bust sizes and neck sizes. And also, even our customer service, if somebody has a belt and they’ve put on weight, they just message me and I’m happy to send an extra sizing strap for a longer size if needed. I’ve done that on a number of occasions and I didn’t even charge for it.
“But that’s valuing your customers, and that’s the kind of old school after-sales service that I learned about in home economics class; it’s really, really valuable,” she added.
“And again, back to sustainability, it means people don’t throw stuff away. It extends the life of something. We all talk about acceptance of all sizes and all types of people, and that’s important. So that’s why from the very start of the business, before all of these things were keywords, I was already doing them, making sure that everybody was included. So there you go with your inclusivity.”
In the spirit of inclusivity, Úna will be attending a one-day pop-up Christmas Fair in the Royal Marine Hotel, Dun Laoghaire on December 10, giving people the opportunity to pick up a beautiful leather design as part of a Christmas gift. The Irish Pop-Up Collective will run from 10am until 7pm and will feature a group of 50 designers of all types of products, including homeware, beauty products and clothing.
Further information on Úna and her products can be found at www.unaburke.com or by following @UnaBurkeLeather on Facebook, Instagram or X.
