Marie Keane, founder of her brand Clouds In My Coffee, had never considered becoming an Irish fashion designer , and it wasn't until she took part in Junk Kouture in school that her exciting journey began.
Marie has worked in New York and Paris over the years and has now settled back in Ireland to continue working on her brand full-time since March, which is best recognised for producing dresses with an ethereal feel. Marie spoke to RSVP Live about the origins of her brand and how she has now made her clothing accessible to customers looking to rent Irish designs.
After her brief stint with fashion design in Transition Year, Marie returned to it a few years later: "I started Clouds In My Coffee as a sewing diary in 2020. I was in my first year of college, and the college was closed because of COVID, so I had nothing to sew on except secondhand garments or my parents' stuff they were throwing out. "So I didn't really have anything, but I kept on making things really puffy.
I loved organza, loved lace, loved sheer fabrics in general. And I called it Clouds In My Coffee just because I loved the song and I didn't want it to be Marie Florence Designs. I think I was a bit embarrassed.
But I feel like I've really leaned into the whole puffy, fluffy, cloudy, ethereal feel, which I love." Marie will take unwanted blazers provided by the supply chain at Oxfam, and transform them into wearable and eye-catching pieces, all part of the upcycling aspect of her brand: "It's really leaning into that whole natural-like things that move really beautifully.
She continued: "A lot of my dresses just come from, let's say, dead stock that I find somewhere or old wedding dresses that I upcycled, but it's usually with a really airy, fairy, kind of otherworldly vibe." Clouds In My Coffee has partnered with Club Tia, a clothing rental service which hosts an array of Irish designers, making it extremely accessible for those looking to support Irish design without paying the full
price.
Speaking on her collaboration with the site, Marie has high hopes: "I t's kind of allowing more people to gain access to Irish design, to see the quality, to see the cut, to see like how it's made, how they feel in it, and then that's kind of creating the customers of tomorrow. So I think it's serving something that there's already a huge appetite for.
I don't think Club Tia will need to do much marketing to convince people this is important." You can browse Marie's collection and rent some of her beautiful designs on the Club Tia site here. Want to see more of the stories you love from RSVP ? To add RSVP as a preferred source of news on Google, simply click here
