‘People love to know the fabric is woven in Ireland’ – slow fashion starts on home turf for the mother-daughter team behind Mise Tusa

The reality of family businesses is that the mother-daughter dynamic has always been an important, if somewhat hidden, phenomenon. That curtain is beginning to be lifted.

Galway-based fashion designer Meritta Gorman-Geoghegan and her daughter Bridget are a case in point.

Mother and daughter are working together to lead the sustainable fashion brand Mise Tusa.

Both grew up around clothes.

“The story is that mom made her first suit when she was nine years old,” Bridget said.

“I always make dogs,” says Meritta. “But it was the first suit I made for myself. I’m not allowed to use a sewing machine, so I have to sew it all by hand.”

In 1992, when Meritta became pregnant with Bridget, she founded the Ail Ruin Design Center in Clarinbridge, Co Galway.

Ail Riun’s retail business features international brands, as well as some Meritta designs.

Bridget grew up “on the shop floor”, but initially went her own way, leaving to study Law and Human Rights.

She couldn’t break the fashion routine, but worked away from the family business, in London, until circumstances intervened and the pandemic struck.

She said: “I was working in marketing for Selfridges in London and then I came back on Saint Patrick’s Day, just for a weekend, and ended up staying for three months because of Covid and furlough and everything. ,” she said.

The need to fill their days during the lockdown spurred the pair to work together.

“We probably can’t sit idly by,” Bridget said.

At the time, Meritta was completing a postgraduate degree in creative and cultural entrepreneurship at Trinity College Dublin.

The two teamed up last year to launch a new clothing brand, Mise Tusa, available at the former Ail Ruin design center.

A key element of the brand is consciously separating itself from fast fashion and the industry’s focus on creating large volumes of interchangeable garments that are shipped quickly globally. .

Instead, the brand features one-off designs and a multifunctional ‘movement’ collection.

The clothes are designed and made in their own studio in the west of Ireland.

“I think a lot of people have woken up to buying less, buying better and buying locally,” says Bridget.

“I found some people coming in, they wanted to know that the fabric of a certain department was woven in Ireland and made locally.”

However, local origin does not mean a limited customer base.

Social reach has skyrocketed since the brand’s launch. Website traffic is also high. Many customers use it as a “source of information” before visiting the store.

They have also made targets targeting international markets

Earlier this year, Mise Tusa opened a pop-up store in Paris for two months.

The group is currently busy preparing for a pop-up shop in London that will open this week and run until early next month.

Bridget says the UK’s push has been complicated by red tape.

“You know with Brexit and everything that has to do with this. She said.

But spreading the word in European fashion capitals helps with what Meritta sees as the brand’s core purpose.

“A lot of women lose themselves and lose their own style,” she said.

“What positive things can we do for women from what we do?

“I think there’s a lot of awakening to menopause and everything at the moment and I see a lot of our clients are on that page as well.

“It is satisfying. People can feel how they want to feel on their own skin and clothes. “

Back to the dynamic of mother and daughter. How do they avoid talking business all the time?

“We’re probably happy to talk about it,” Meritta said. “It’s (a problem for) the people around us more than anything.”

However, work-life balance is something they are always aware of.

“We talked a lot about wanting to simplify things and be a little more structured when we were on, when we were off, when mom designed, when we had a pop-up,” says Bridget.

“I think you hear it all the time from people in the business, it’s so easy to be a consumer, constantly asking ‘what’s next?’ And you’re always busy.

“So you need to think about the life you want to be next to it and how you can make it work best for you.”