“I have to keep the tradition of the family going. As I’m continuing with that, I will put on the family name. It’s nice to know the next generation takes it on.”
Unsurprisingly, Talia Byre designed her final collection, The Feral Women of the Inish Fee, to be passed down through generations while the fabrics and silhouettes simultaneously breathe the past decades’ spirit. The centrepieces of inspiration were three of her great-grandmother’s skirts, which she paired with colours and materials stemming from charity shops. Carrying on her ambition to sustain local trade, Byre visited mills from around her hometown and very instinctively selected the materials for her graduation collection. Subsequently, the sourced cloth led Byre to become more involved with knitwear. “I approached the knitwear as if it was woven. I was a bit eclectic in my sourcing; thus, I repurposed all the knits that I found from various wardrobes of different people.”
Unfortunately, the ongoing pandemic interfered with plans and, devastatingly, destroyed the lives of many. Byre speaks very frankly about the personal consequences of COVID-19, “The pandemic hit my family really hard. We lost a lot of family members.” The lockdown offered her the necessary time and space to be with her family and reflect. Deliberating the freshly finished master, her aspirations, and the way she would want to take from now on, she saw her plans for the future take form. “I have to keep the tradition of the family going. As I’m continuing with that, I will put on the family name. It’s nice to know the next generation takes it on,” she says with strength in her voice. “It was a big thinking time for me.”