By Dionne Meehan
A UNIQUE consignment dress hub with the ethos of resale, repair, repurpose and rebuild has just opened in Letterkenny.
Circular Dress Collaborative, located on the Thorn Road, is the brainchild of Shelia Clancy O’Donnell, a New York native who relocated to Donegal a number of years ago.
From the age of five-years-old, Shelia had dreams of becoming a fashion designer.
Attending fashion school in New York, she went on to work with top designers such as Marc Jacobs and Michael Kors- not to mention being one just four people in the world to work with Liz Claiborne in her design studio!
Here, Shelia learned about fashion, designing handbags, accessories, dresses and sportswear before getting to specialise in one area.
But that decision was easy for Shelia as dresses were always her passion.
Head-hunted by the same company that owns Tommy Hilfiger, she spent years travelling the world designing dresses.
But how did Shelia ever end up in Donegal you may ask? Doochary man Martin O’Donnell has the answers to that question.
Meeting Martin while he was living in the States, the pair fell in love, got married and had their first child.
But unfortunately for Shelia, the company that she was working for at the time wasn’t the most accommodating.
Stepping away from the fashion industry for a few years, Shelia soon found the creative craving creeping up on her again.
This prompted the family’s big move to Donegal.
Spending the past 19 years working as a retail manager in Marks and Spencer and Home Store and More, Shelia decided to study a Masters in Sustainability Leadership at the University of Galway.
Through the course, the class was taken on a trip to Bologna in Italy. Here, Shelia visited a social enterprise called Eta Beta, which was founded by a famous glass artist who just wanted to help people who were marginalised in the community.
This inspired Shelia to open her own unique shop, ‘Curricular Dress Collaborative’.
“I said at that point, ‘I need to get back to what I truly love’ which is clothing, fashion and helping the
community,” she told the Donegal News.
“I decided to bring this all together in this fashion hub called ‘Circular Dress Collaborative’,” she said
Despite the shop only being open one week today, Shelia said the reception has been incredible.
If you have an item of clothing in your wardrobe that you don’t wear, Shelia will help you sell it!
Once something is sold, the seller receives 60 per cent of the sale and Shelia’s shop receives 40 per cent.
The 40 per cent doesn’t just go back into the business, it goes towards providing Transition Year students with the experience of what it is like to work in a social enterprise.
It also helps women in the community who come in on a voluntary basis to sew and have a hub to do things that are creative; and it will also get women off the Tús scheme and back into the workforce through creative means.
“The 40 per cent not only covers the costs, it helps the community,” Shelia concluded.
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