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Cleo Collaboration on The Belfast Scarf
Cleo Collaboration on The Belfast Scarf
When I first set up my business, in 1987, my first client was Mrs Joyce of Cleo Ltd. The wonderful Jimmy Hourihan introduced me to her and over three years I hand-wove bolts of fabric for her. This fabric design was based on Swedish lace threading and was woven with fine tweed woollen yarn. Subconsciously I had the lace-making heritage of Monaghan in my DNA. Combined with the beautiful fine tweed yarns, it resulted in a lovely lightweight tweed fabric used in suiting by Cleo’s much of which was for the Japanese market.
A photograph of two suits modelled by Frances Duff and Sonia Reynolds featured in the book ‘Cleo,’ written by Hillary O’Kelly. Unfortunately, the fabric was attributed to Crock-of-Gold weavers in Blackrock. Mrs Joyce sent me a copy of the book with a letter expressing her sadness at this error. While the mistake was disappointing, I was thrilled to see the picture of ‘my’ suits feature in the Cleo book. Mrs Joyce became a great friend and mentor over the years, so to be included was special.
There is something special about discovering some boxes of wonderful cotton and William Ross linen yarns, safely tucked away under other textile treasures. When Sarah Joyce of Cleo Ltd made the discovery, she contacted me to chat about what they might do with this lovely find. My eyes lit up when she opened that first box – inside were cones of the wonderful slubbed cotton and linen yarns she had used in the designs many years ago, which were sadly no longer in production. Sarah and I chatted about their design archive and what better way to be eco-conscious in this fast-paced world than to use these beautiful yarns to hand-weave a wonderful heritage scarf, a limited edition of scarves continuing to stand the test of time as they become heirlooms of the future.
And so ‘The Belfast Scarf’ is crafted in my hand-weaving studios along the border in Co. Monaghan, for Cleo’s emporium of Irish textiles, on Dublin’s Kildare Street.
