Mulholland Drive: Interview with fashion designer Fintan Mulholland

Fashion designer Fintan Mulholland hails from Co. Monaghan, has a studio in Belfast, and from what we can tell, is set to become an international superstar in the very near future. With his BA collection having sold out, he has already won five awards for his work, as well as a Paul Smith scholarship to study design in Tokyo. Last year, just months after completing his MA, Mulholland was asked to collaborate on Brown Thomas’ Create showcase – an experience the designer says was a highlight of 2016.
“Working directly with Brown Thomas, producing my own work and showcasing in store just months after graduating was amazing,” enthuses Mulholland. “It has really given me confidence in my work – all the preparation and planning has really paid off.”
Mulholland says that his passion for design began to emerge in his early teens, when he first started experimenting with fashion. Music became a huge influence on his style.
“Thinking about the beats, lyrics and narratives with songs, I would dream up shapes and clothes in my head, how they move with the beats – I think music really aids the early stages of design.”
Mulholland always enjoyed art in school and brought his creative flair to studying Textile Art and Fashion in Belfast School of Art. Playing around with print and embroidery, Mulholland found his niche working with knit, and was determined to use his education to become an expert in his specialty textile.
“The Masters course at Nottingham Trent offered me the opportunity to develop a range of practical skills to apply to my work,” he reflects. “Those skills enabled me to develop concepts into a finished collection, as well as to find innovative and sustainable ways to create garments.”
While yarn and knit are often dismissed as dated, Mulholland’s stunning and intricate work shows the versatility and modernity of his chosen textiles and techniques.
“My approach to fashion through the craft of knit is to build an understanding of the yarn through experimentation and sampling,” he says. “I aim to get a full understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the equipment I use. I then use this to my advantage by pushing these limits to create innovative and interesting garments. In turn, this allows me to plan and execute my silhouette in materials that lend themselves to the garment both sensually and visually. I use alpacas and mohair yarns for their handle – I think they age and wear beautifully. For construction pieces, meanwhile, I use linen, merino and wools.”
Mulholland’s latest collection was inspired by his travels in Japan. Ever a great appreciator of all kinds of art, he was drawn to prehistoric Japanese sculptures that feature sharp symmetry and humanoid features.
“The figures show various kinds of body distortion,” he notes. “They have exaggerated limbs or sexual organs, while geometric forms tend to shift from symmetry to asymmetry. Often the geometric pattern becomes the infilling for naturalistic design, and from that then appears an individual. Seeing links in the sculptures from my previous work in the lines and curves made me want to use some aspects for their mystery and shape.”
For 2017, Mulholland is hoping to finish his new collection – and also to design for some music stars!
“There’s some really exciting and interesting music at the minute,” he says. “I would love to see Roisin Murphy or Alison Goldfrapp in one of my pieces!”