Going up in frames

Exhibitions of fashion illustrations are usually for those who are very committed to either fashion or illustration, and rarely cause a ripple beyond a confined circle of knowing insiders.

But the work of Sorcha O’Raghallaigh is a different order entirely. For confirmation. look no further than the second solo collection of her extraordinary fashion illustrations, which comes to Dublin’s Monster Truck Studios this month.
It’s very title Wait a minute ...... Where’s me jumper? is borrowed from a song by quirky Corkonian noiseniks The Sultans Of Ping. It suggests that the 22-year-old O’Raghallaigh inhabits a world closer to reality than your average catwalk scenester. But, as she explained to me in a voice not dissimilar to Sinead O’Connor’s, “I’m really inspired by music, not so much by the recording as the lyrics. But I’m also inspired by what’s going on in the clubs in London – that whole rave culture.”
Her large and overblown shapes use everything from watercolours to ink, spray paint, crayon, markers, thread, fabric, beads and buttons, and she adds her undoubtedly original touch to the influences of the artists she most admires, such as Julie Verhoven, Quinten Blake and Tim Burton. Her glitter kids of the night drawn with their long limbs dancing across the page, make a refreshing change from the mopre pretentious work of fashioneers, who equate the latest variation in a lapel button with inventing the wheel. “Fashion is often taken too seriously,” she says. “It should have a fun element, which I think has come back into it very recently. I know I’m doing some things that will be laughed at in years to come, but it’s important to catch the moment, while other stuff I’m doing will stand the test of time.”
O’Raghallaigh is acutely aware of the entwinement of pop and rock music and fashion, from Elvis through to The Beatles, The Sex Pistols and Nirvana. “All kinds of creative endeavours feed off each other,” she explains. “The music I’m listening to is just as important to me as the medium I’m working in at the time – and what’s happening in the London underground fashion scene now, and what bands like the Klaxons are doing, fits with what I’m doing.”
O’Raghallaigh says that her favourite musical fashionista is one-time Moloko vocalist Róisín Murphy.
“I think Róisín’s got it down perfect,” she says. “Even when she’s performing live, she’s so on the ball; how she looks fits perfectly with the music she’s making.”
And as for those who haven’t quite nailed it?
“Christina Aguilera often gets it right and then she does something that blows it. Lily Allen is another one. I like her vintage dresses, but the Nike shoes spoil it, as if she’s trying too hard and it just looks contrived.”