“Fashion is not just about clothes, it’s about culture,” Virgil Abloh, one-time artistic director of Louis Vuitton, once reflected. And so it was this week at the National Ploughing Championships in Ratheniska, Co Laois.
Culture, fashion and commerce intertwined inside the event’s “fashion dome”, where three times a day models walked the runway. Irish fashion veteran Celia Holman Lee described it as one of “the most successful running fashion shows in the country”.
Long-time Ploughing Championships attendee Agnes Ryan agreed, adding: “All the farming women would know it would be going on, and get there nearly an hour before to get a seat.”
She reflected that people outside farming circles might not realise of the annual ploughing contest, one of the biggest of its kind, “that there’s a lot here for women, as well as the men”.
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All seats were full 15 minutes before a show attended by The Irish Times commenced and latecomers were left craning their necks to get a view of the style from local boutiques and designers. Ms Holman Lee informed the crowd that trench-coats were the “story of the season” and colour-wise “camel is everywhere”.
Farming fashion is an art form straitened by necessity, or what local dry stock farmer Ger Keogh described as “practicality”. On exiting the 11.30am fashion show, he described the featured pieces as “smart and very practical”.
“There’s outfits that wouldn’t cost a fortune to look well in,” he said.
Wearing a distressed blue baseball cap, suit jacket and cream shirt, Mr Keogh admitted he hadn’t reflect too long on his own choice of outfit for the day.
“I didn’t put thought into what I was going to wear today, ‘cause if you did put thought into it you’d walk into a heap of muck and it’d get up on top of you and destroy you,” he said.
But he agreed the young people “looked great; they’ve got they’re own style”.
Across the younger generations, denim jeans and county jerseys remain popular. The buzz-cut mullet appeared to be the on-trend hairstyle, with Ray-Ban sunglasses pulling together the signature look. The occasional “Connell chain” caught the sunlight but they are no longer a staple among this demographic, while cowboy hats are left for to the older generations.
Back at the fashion show a “beautiful winter coat” had caught Anges Ryan’s eye. Pressed as to whether a new purchase might be added to her personal collection, she laughed: “That’s the idea. It’s the end of the farming year so we go a bit mad. It’s our last holiday before the hard work starts again.”
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