- Culture
- 15 Nov 24
Irish Designer Oran O’Reilly: “Everything fell into place in a really beautiful way"
Oran O’Reilly is a final year production design student whose designs are adored by a slew of admirers from the drag community to global pop stars. His rise through the fashion ranks - as a student no less - might seem unlikely, but a single glance at his designs is enough to understand the widespread acclaim he's received thus far...
Despite still being in college, Oran O’Reilly has already left an indelible mark on the fashion industry.
Born and raised in Dublin, the final year IADT student is currently navigating college life, balancing his studies with a rapidly-growing career in the works.
He’s your “favourite artist’s favourite artist”, a designer highly sought after by the likes of Chappell Roan, The Last Dinner Party, CMAT and more.
O’Reilly says he never expected his recent success, and that he only really considered costume and fashion after he started to study production design at IADT. But design wasn’t always his first choice. In fact, he originally dreamed of becoming a playwright.
Oran O'Reilly. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.“I looked for a relevant playwriting course close to home and figured I’d love to do drama in Trinity,” O'Reilly recalls, "but, in the end, I got denied".
The pivotal moment sparked a newfound realisation for him.
“Whenever I used to write plays or think about writing plays, I’d always visualise it in my head first. The image came before the words. I loved the idea of creating worlds, spaces and characters. So I found a course in IADT in production design."
From there, things started falling into place. In just two weeks, O’Reily whipped up a portfolio, submitted the work and was accepted into the course.
“In first year, you have to try everything: character makeup, hair, costumes, props, sets and visual effects,” he tells me. “I figured I could learn the rest, but I had no clue how to approach costume design. So two weeks before the course began, I bought myself a shitty sewing machine on Amazon for twenty euro and made a corset".
“I became immediately obsessed and I absolutely fell in love. Everything really clicked for me with costume design. It was exactly the medium I had been searching for. I was always doing what I do now, but it was through words and now I’m doing it through fabric. It’s exactly what I’m supposed to do".
With a new spark of creativity at the helm, O’Reilly began creating garments which honoured his personal muses, including classic films, the 1970s as a whole and a sprawling roster of female icons, from Isabelle Adjani to Little Edie from Grey Gardens and the Bouviers.
“Fashion was always in the periphery for me. Growing up, I loved watching my mom put outfits together; she’s a lot like Carrie Bradshaw from Sex in the City. We watched that show so much when I was growing up, as well as Desperate Housewives and Neighbours. I think the characters from those shows influenced me so much, but honestly my mom inspired me more than anyone else".
Over the Christmas break during his first year, O'Reilly made a corset for his friend Chloe with actress Nastsha Lyonne's face stitched on it. After posting it to Instagram, the But I'm a Cheerleader star saw his creation and re-posted it to her story.
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“All of a sudden, I started receiving a crazy influx of messages from people asking if I sold my work and where they could buy it. And I started to realise that people cared about my work and wanted to wear it themselves."
From there, he began making costumes for drag queens, his first big commission being Bailey J Mills, for whom he recreated the iconic red dress worn by Divine in the John Waters cult-classic Pink Flamingos.
“After that, I started entering the world of fashion more. It was a chain reaction where CMAT saw my work with drag queens, then The Last Dinner Party saw that. It was never my intention to dress famous people. I was just excited to find my medium and start creating. Everything fell into place in a really beautiful way".
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Soon enough, O’Reilly became a go-to designer for The Last Dinner Party during their Dublin shows. Him and the UK band first teamed up when they opened for Hozier at 3Arena in December 2023 and again when they performed on The Tommy Tiernan Show the following month. Before their 3Olympia stint in October of this year, he reached out to the band’s keyboardist Aurora Nishevci with a dress already made.
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“I had Anna from Possession printed on a dress and I didn’t know if they’d like it or if it was the vibe they were going for. But Abigail [the lead singer] loved it. Being able to let loose and go crazy with that piece was so special".
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“It’s such a beautiful thing seeing how their fans interact with my work because the artists I’ve worked with have very cult followings and avid fanbases. You have CMAT, who takes on the cowboy aesthetic; or The Last Dinner Party and their Renaissance and Tudor-like elegance; or Chappell with the camp girl aesthetic. They’re all in such specific niches. I know when I see an artist I love, like Ethel Cain or Florence & The Machine, in an outfit I love, it makes me so happy. So I always try to do that for the fans.
“Hearing people talk about the Possession dress I did for Abigail when The Last Dinner Party came to the Olympia was so beautiful. It made me so happy, because it meant I did a service to the fans.”
Oran O'Reilly. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.Perhaps the biggest moment of O’Reilly’s career, thus far anyways, came when he got the chance to design a look for global pop superstar Chappell Roan to be worn during her Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess tour over the summer.
“I’ll never get over this story. It genuinely makes me smile every time I think about it," O’Reilly beams. "I first listened to Chappell's music in September 2023 - when her debut album came out - on the bus during my commute into college. I immediately fell in love with her look and music. I thought she was so fun and campy. I immediately knew I wanted to dress her, so I tried to get in contact with her, but couldn’t get a response. I didn’t take offence to it, it just wasn’t the right time.
“Then one day in April I saw that a stylist I followed on Instagram dressed Ali X, who I’m also obsessed with, so I swiped and said how much I love the outfit. Turns out, it was Genesis Webb, Chappell Roan’s stylist! She responded saying how much she loved my work and that they wanted to work with me that summer while Chappell was doing her tour stops. I couldn’t believe it, I thought I was being played".
Webb emailed O’Reilly a deck of looks and inspirations for the designs, and scrolled upon a slide of Divine from Pink Flamingos, the very same muse from the costume he designed for Bailey J Mills nearly two years prior.
“I knew I needed to do it. I had already done it before,” he says of the full-circle moment. “It was literally meant to be.
“I had two weeks to make it and ship it to her in LA. So I made it in four days, in my bedroom no less, and had my mom try it on for size because they had similar measurements. It was such a crazy time. I didn’t hear anything back for a while. But then I got a message from Genesis saying, ‘We love it!', and that it would be worn during Kentuckiana Pride on 15th June".
On the night, O’Reilly was glued to social media, waiting for the moment that Roan would finally take the stage.
“I was up on Twitter all night, refreshing the hashtag #ChappellRoan for hours. I saw the dress around 3a.m and said to myself, ‘that isn’t mine’. I was so sleep deprived and stressed, and therefore convinced myself it wasn’t my dress and they had someone else do it!
“But the next day, I was out in the country with my family and got a notification on my phone that Chappell Roan tagged me in a post. The response was insane. People were so supportive and nice. It was just bonkers.
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“I received loads of emails and really kind messages. Teen Vogue and Dazed Beauty were writing about my work. It was all so overwhelming. Jimmy Fallon held up four of her looks during their interview and that was one of them. That week was truly the best of my life".
Capping off our chat, O'Reilly reflects on those earlier days when he dreamed of doing theatre, discussing how he finally gets to suffuse those aspirations with costume design, where the art speaks for itself.
"I sit in this funny sphere of costume and fashion," he muses. "I think that’s just scale alone because what I do is costuming at the end of the day. People come to me for something a little wacky. They’d go elsewhere if they wanted a slim-line black dress. Because every artist wants something different, it’s hard to have cohesiveness. But I think, in terms of a brand, extravagance, theatricality and camp is where I fall".
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