Our Friday floral story : A chat with Irish creative cashmere force, Lucy Downes.
A beautifully considered conversation with Lucy about Sphere One, life influences & colourful confluences.
BLÁTHANNA X LUCY DOWNES -
“Colour lab dipping and combining are my favourite parts of the design process. Ever since I spent time tea-staining fabrics at Donna Karan to achieve the perfect antique hue, I have been captivated by the subtleties and beauty of colour.”
Lucy Downes, founder & holistic creator and curator of Sphere One creates wonderful contemporary cashmere in such stylish shapes. As a florist for 20 years, being warm whilst working is a guiding principle. Scarves, cardigans, sweaters are friends to help make it through cooler days in comfort.. As a business owner, the challenge is to combine style whilst layered to combat the cold. This is how I found Sphere One.
Of course, there are the tell tale details that were spotted from eye corners from lurex threads to fine neon details to draw my outer magpie veteran raver in.
The Sphere One logo is a circle, inspired by Lucy’s family friend Patrick Scott and is hand-stitched at the back-neck of each garment using a different coloured yarn each season.
Unobtrusive to the wearer, the softness of the garment is kept intact against the skin. This subtle logo characterises the craftsmanship of the collection, where each piece is woven on a hand loom or knitted on a hand frame. The circle is central to the Sphere One identity, from the pleasing purity of the shape, to the environmental spheres we live in and the cocooning nature of what we wear.
Each season, I am lucky to receive one of Lucy’s postcards to announce her next collection. The envelope, always a repurposed map, the A5 frameable card with a personal handwritten message, a joyful indicator of each season's inspiration and individuality. Each of these collectibles creates a frisson for a former fancy paper collector & captures all influences on Lucy to create her new season of inspired collectible cashmere.
Every collection direction brings you on a new journey through the textures that caught Lucy’s eye for a while. From windswept West of Ireland coral beaches to turmeric & magenta filled wall patinas in India to dappled light in a woodland at the source of the River Liffey and then there is the country fairground or our night sky punctured in silver starlight. Each season has a styling with a quirk of colour, metallic, neon, a juxtaposition of nature, evoking elements that have excited Lucy again.
As a lucky attendee at Sphere One’s happy 25th birthday celebration last Autumn, the table runner of foraged moss, oak leaves, gathered stones & vintage linen reaffirmed the why I adore wearing each special Sphere One piece. We ate salmon caught by Lucy and her Mum with all food prepared by Rachel Allen, a long time Sphere One champion. Everyone there was there because they basked in Lucy's work, lifestyle and conversations filled one of the most simply stylish textural birthday evenings. The company was full of brilliant Sphere One stockists, supporters and collaborators - a true reflection on how small creative businesses here in Ireland really circle around each other to bring economy to all who make in quality.
It is utter joy to meet creators like Lucy in other spheres, who understand the plant and flower world so well - one of my favourite photos from Lucy this week showed simply rain droplets on her favourite fern.
For anyone who does not know Lucy or Sphere One, here is a quick introduction so that suddenly you will want to know her more and you will definitely want to collect her pieces as cashmere forever clothes.
Lucy Downes is an Irish designer, growing up between the mountains of Wicklow and the city of Dublin. From a young age, Lucy was immersed in the modern architecture, design and painting movements in Ireland. She has always been drawn to botanical structures, for instance by the way the sepals of a flower open out, enveloping while unveiling the precious petals inside. She admires simple, understated shapes such as Tapio Wirkkala’s glass, the ceramics of Hella Jongerius, and the work of Alexander Calder, belying their complicated techniques. She strives to marry these influences with ergonomic lines of the body and the beautiful inherent qualities of knitted medium - drape, stretch, volume and texture. These inspirations, together with a first class honours degree in fashion design, a number of awards and 10 years as a designer for Donna Karan New York, inform her conceptual process, while a post-graduate scholarship award to Shima Seiki, world leaders in knitwear technology, underpins the technical strength of her work.
These Substack conversations are all about creators who are unassuming but whose passion for all they make is powerful and in my mind, need to be celebrated more. I hope that you enjoy this very considered Blathanna conversation with Lucy Downes of Sphere One on this Friday morning.
IN CONVERSATION …
I was lucky enough to chat to Lucy recently and I hope that you enjoy our conversation here:
What are your current favourite plant and/or flower colours and structures at the moment?
Just now, June in Ireland, I am loving the pots of delicate pink and white Saxifraga. I love how they tumble over the edge of the pot and how the tiny flowers tremble in the breeze. The wisteria is out in the front garden but I'm finding the smaller, wild flowers more charming like the tiny white flowers of wood sorrel and sweet woodruff (Lady’s bedstraw).
Years ago we rented a shepherd’s hut from Mary White, (ex Green Party senator) in Borris, Co Carlow, for the nearby Literary Festival. Their garden was wonderful. She dug up a clump of sweet woodruff for me to transplant. It is so delicately scented and charming just ambling and spreading around my little front garden popping up in new places. It has a scent of freshly cut hay. She told me that traditionally, dried upside down, it was put in the wardrobe to deter moths so I am extra fond of this with a business that is mainly cashmere knitwear!
Does our landscape here influence your collections? Are the influences behind each season's collections drawn from glimpses in nature.
It often does but not on every collection. I might be inspired by an artist’s work but I am often inspired by the mountains of West Wicklow where I spent a lot of time as a child. I have taken direct inspiration in, for instance, the colour and pattern of a pinecone for a cable sweater or the hand stitched isobars of the ordinance survey map of the area. More frequently it is in the colours and colour names such as granite, lichen, spruce, gorse, riverbank and bog-cotton.
I am always captivated by the swathes of moor grass across the Irish landscape, from Wicklow to Mayo, catching the sunlight as it is blown back and forth by the wind. Inspired by this, still a student at NCAD, I tried to replicate it in choosing a dark yellow ochre yarn colour that I thought emulated the ‘main colour’. It was a disaster - flat, heavy and looking like baby poo!
My mistake was not understanding that it is the tonality and hue of colours, created by light and shade, wet and dry, that brings colour to life. In addition the yarn I chose was not a lustrous medium. There began a lifelong obsession with juxtaposition of colours. I began to see what Paul Klee, Victor Vasarelli and Josef Albers, among others were concerned with.
Three elements have had a lasting influence on my designer mind and my brand Sphere One:
Raw materials — Within natural fibres you can only really achieve a lustrous colour with silk/cashmere and where the yarn is Worsted-spun versus Woollen-spun. This is what we buy from Loro Piana and call our Featherweight pieces. I also sourced from top Italian spinner Cariaggi a silk/cashmere bouclé which has a beautiful lustrous colour and spongey, bouncy, comforting feel.
Colour combinations — Twisting different hues together to form a Marl yarn or combining several fibre dyed hues to form a Mélange colour lends depth and vibrancy. This generally gives a relaxed, sporty feel. Of course playing with stripes, pattern or patches, the colours appear altered in relation to their neighbour as per Albers’ experiments.
Tonal materials — For refined, solid colours, as well as black, incorporating other materials into the design, such as silk chiffon, grosgrain, tulle and silk velvet really lifts the entire composition. The tonality and light reflecting quality of each material plays off the other and keeps the eye interested, while keeping the garment palette subtle and versatile in a wardrobe.
You are renowned for your use of texture and colour, always with a sense of pop and sparkle, are your colours created from plant dyes and how you create your amazing colours and hues?
Yes! Sphere One is renowned for colour. As mentioned I’m a bit obsessed. I’m lucky in that sourcing from the very best cashmere mills in Scotland and Italy the many processes they undertake such as dyeing at fibre stage (rather than when the yarn is twisted), blending colours at fibre stage results in colours of depth and vibrancy.
In addition we have a big enough business that we can achieve the minimum order quantity to dye bespoke colours for Sphere One. These mills have incredibly talented dyers and will match any swatch. They send you back the trials in the form of beautiful little hanks of yarn from which to choose your favourite lab dip. Each one will be very close to the swatch sent and generally one will be perfect. Otherwise they will lab dip another round. The language and technique of colour lab dipping is very specialised. I have sent to Loro Piana in Italy the most bizarre things from birthday wrapping paper to a pair of fluorescent leggings from Stella McCartney for Adidas. They managed to achieve that really bright orange, and so was born colour “Stellar”! For a particular shade of electric blue that I yearned for I sent swatches of the wrapping from a packet of Nori seaweed, the toe of a nylon stocking, and even a bright blue collar that had been worn by my sister‘s cat Tashi. The lap dips matched to that collar turned out to be the perfect blue and so was born the colour ‘Tashi’, unique to Sphere One and currently in used in our SS25 collection.
The oldest cashmere mill in Europe is Scotland’s Todd & Duncan. I twist yarn bespoke colours every season for a special 5-ply ‘Arran’ cashmere which is comprised of three different hues. Again it requires a certain minimum quantity and I feel lucky to be able to mix these bespoke colours with such talented and knowledgeable design teams. The 5 ply comprises 2 ends of Colour 1, 2 ends of a 2nd colour, and 1 end of a 3rd colour. The interaction of the shades is fascinating. With contrasting component colours the result is a tweedy, rustic look while with 3 very similar shades the result looks like a solid colour but has a vivacity and beautiful depth of tone.
I have also offered some lovely plant dyed cashmere colours tinted from plants such as Madder root, Logwood and Woad. The dying is a rarified art form. They tend to be delicate hues. I’m also a big fan of totally undyed cashmere. The equivalent of red heads, dark haired and blondes in human terms, cashmere goats naturally are either creamy white colour, or a warm biscuit colour, or a darker tan colour. At the yarn fair in Florence, which happens twice a year, I asked the mills for years if they could supply these ‘naked’ undyed colours. Finally and happily we managed to offer them about four years ago with the industry being more cognisant of sustainable practices and the trend toward natural and organic fibres.
What are your favourite plants at home and work at the moment
I think the ferns are my favourite at the moment. They seem such a miracle of nature with their little crozier-like fronds unfurling to structures of such strength, breath and vivacity. In a small outdoor atrium at home, there are Osmunda Regalis and Shuttle cock ferns from friends in Kerry. Together with Asplenium scolopendrium, (hart's-tongue fern) they make a scape of different green textures and hues, which I love, more than lots of colour.
Indoors, both at the Sphere One studio and at home, my favourite is always the Phlebodium Aureum 'Blue Star’; an upright, epiphytic fern. It has rhizomes that look like soft, furry rabbit's feet lending its other common name: rabbit’s foot fern. These are so cute but it’s real beauty for me is the silvery, blue green colour of the fronds.
Do you get great inspiration when you are out fishing and where is your favourite spot?
I love the Ballycroy National park where vast, uninterrupted moor lands and mountains surround. The river is like a scar in the landscape whose reflections change with the sky. My favourite colour combination is on a sunny day when the deep, soft peaty dark brown of the water is cut with blue of the reflected sky on the surface.
Some of these impressions made it into a Sphere One collection a few years ago. Todd & Duncan in Scotland twist bespoke colour combinations for us every season. Those ones I called Deep Pool, Confluence and Fast water.
Which of your pieces do you wear gardening and fishing?
I have two sweaters for fishing, a neat little style DOTTY and our best selling KERNEL which I originally designed for men in 2003. They are both in dusty green colours; the ideal colour to be discreet in the environment. But the pieces I am never without when fishing are the COIFFURE hat and XYLEM snood in super cosseting silk cashmere Bouclé. The snood is absolutely ideal rather than a scarf as it doesn’t have any tails so is not in danger of falling off or getting tangled. Over many years fishing I’ve seen men and women wear fleece snoods. They are typically synthetic fleece, with two panels sewn together with a toggle to tighten. I found the toggle would be in the way, catch in your zip, and as always the label would start itching just as a downpour arrived and your hood is up. So I set out to design the most comfortable, flexible, seam free, stretchy version. Deceptively simple, it is knitted in the round so there are no seams. The top and bottom openings are tubular rather than rib to prevent itchiness and maximise stretch. If it’s really cold and windy it is long enough to pull up over your nose and ears. It’s my fishing essential, and also perfect for those who ski! I always strive for practicality and wearabilty in my designs so that they work hard for every wearer.
When it comes to gardening, sadly for my sweaters, I just lunge at it in whatever I’m wearing. I rarely prepare to garden or don any particular clothes. I’ll be mooching around with a cup of tea and notice something that needs attention. An hour later I’ll still be engrossed, leaves and cobwebs stuck to the sweater, and I’ll probably find the cup another day after that!
Do you have a favourite vase at home and what would be your ultimate favourite flowers to use in it?
I do. It’s a hand blown (mouth blown) clear glass vase from Simon Pearce. He is a long time friend of my parents, son of Shanagarry pottery founder Philip Pearce and brother to potter Stephen Pearce. He made glass in Kilkenny for years before emigrating to Vermont, USA where he bought and restored a mill on the Quechee river that powers a whole community of glass, pottery and furniture making, as well as a restaurant. Simon Pearce glass has been really successful. When I lived in New York they had a store in SOHO and that’s where I bought two of these vases. They’re about 30cm high cylindrical, really thick glass with a heavy base. I bought many wedding presents at that store but for myself I have always loved 'the seconds'; pieces that are not quite perfect somehow, maybe bubble in the glass or a wobbly rim.
I really love the big drama of Peonies, like scoops of ice cream at first and then huge meringues later. I’d stuff the vase with them and pink climbing roses and add pruned branches of acer for structure and height. The great thing about the mouth blown glass is that it’s so heavy you can go high.
When dressing a table for dinner as you so beautifully did for your amazing evening, would you always forage and gather? Do you like combining lots of seasonal textures along a table setting?
Actually I don’t do much table dressing at home. There are dozens of beach stones along the middle of the table at all times. They just get interspersed with a couple of candles, condiments and bottles of wine! I think it’s key that diners can converse with, and listen to, the entire table and so nothing should be too high. Anyway the way the house is designed the kitchen table is sandwiched between two glass areas bursting with plants so I don’t feel the need for more on the table.
For Sphere One’s 25th anniversary dinner I did dress the tables, really because we used the two wooden desks at the studio and they are quite different from each other, so it was an effort to make one long table look seamless. At Paris Fashion Week we show the collection in a shop space which I rent for the week, and I love to decorate that. In 2018, for a collection based on Ordnance Survey Maps of Wicklow, I brought moss, ferns and granite stones smoothed by the river from Wicklow on the plane, spritzing the ferns just before packing - they looked amazing. It was very true to the Sphere One brand origins in the Wicklow mountains. it's still my favourite Paris decoration, so I it felt right to do the same for the 25th anniversary, adding chunky beeswax church candles along the way. I think the inclusion of stones is influenced by the Japanese interest in replicating mountain scapes with rocks and plants.
Do you have a favourite garden to visit in Ireland or elsewhere? What inspires you there?
My favourite is the Botanic Gardens in Dublin. I love the glass houses, with the warm aroma, the beautiful brass handled doors, amazing mechanisms of humidity and ventilation and the myriad of plants so well tended and labelled. I love it so much I started studying horticulture part-time there in 2020, one component at a time.
Back in 2007 Sphere One was awarded a place to represent the best of European design on a trade mission to Japan. I will never forget the gardens especially In Kyoto. I think that’s where my love of moss and acers started.
What will inspire your next collection or are you allowed to say?
For Autumn Winter 2025, which was shown at Paris Fashion week in March and will deliver into stores later this year, I was inspired by the dark romance of Victorian mourning jewellery.
KEEP UP WITH LUCY’S SPHERE ONE CREATIONS AND NEW SEASON LAUNCHES HERE
A million thank yous to gorgeous Lucy Downes for chatting with so much consideration and thought, & for inspiring me to reignite the love of our own native landscapes amidst which we live. I can’t wait to see what ideas & colours the new Autumn collection brings. Happy Friday X
And subscriber friends, if you would like to catch up on other Blathanna conversations, click here for inspirational chats with Sasha Sykes, Irenie Cossey, Louise Stokes, Meabh McCurtin, Yvette Monahan, Emily Thompson, Carolin Ruggaber, Helle Moyna, Petria Lenehan and more…
Thank you for your beautifully written post. Lucy’s description and name of her colours are so enticing! You and Lucy make me want to own and touch her garments. And the final touch, the hand sewn O. A personal detail that can only come from a founder-designer. And I love that!