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After decades of paddywhackery, Ireland has finally broken free from the cliches imposed upon it. From Paul Mescal, Cillian Murphy and Saoirse Ronan charming Hollywood to fashion falling for designers including Simone Rocha; from authors such as Sally Rooney and Paul Lynch scooping up literary prizes to the “Guinnaissance”, a new green wave is ruling pop culture.
“There’s a real [gravitation] towards the Irish and Irish culture right now,” says Samantha Barry, the editor-in-chief of Glamour. Barry, who grew up in County Cork and has lived in New York for more than 10 years, describes it as “counter-programming” to outsiders’ previous depiction of Irishness geared around leprechauns and wearing green.
This iteration isn’t cringe. Barry says: “We have always had a cool factor, especially in art and literature, and now we are able to show up in those circles in a really authentic way.”
Last year Murphy became the first Irish-born man to win the best actor Oscar. New York magazine has christened a group including the Oppenheimer star and other Irish actors dominating the screen including Colin Farrell, Andrew Scott, Nicola Coughlan, Barry Keoghan and Jessie Buckley the “Craic Pack”. Resale tickets to Mescal’s current run of A Streetcar Named Desire off Broadway in Brooklyn are fetching more than three times their value.
After critical success for Motherland, Catastrophe and Bad Sisters, the writer and actor Sharon Horgan is now adapting Julia May Jonas’s novel Vladimir for Netflix alongside another series of Amandaland.
Eve Hewson is fronting a Calvin Klein campaign while her brother Elijah is selling out venues with his band Inhaler across the US. The Fontaines DC and CMAT are hoovering up award nominations, while the Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap continue to lead an Irish language revival. Last week, Gaeilge was spoken for the very first time during prime minister’s questions. Duolingo reports more than 2 million users studying it globally.
Ireland is also flourishing in fashion. Jonathan Anderson, from Magherafelt in Northern Ireland, who currently oversees Loewe and is hotly tipped to become the new head of Dior, has scored a viral hit by collaborating with Guinness. T-shirts and knitted jumpers riff on the stout’s retro advertisements.
He’s not the only designer to lean into Irish influence or roots. Rocha, whose bow- and pearl-adorned designs sparked a wider coquette aesthetic has referenced everything from Irish folklore to wakes. This season Bad Sisters’ Fiona Shaw walked in her show. Meanwhile Róisín Pierce’s Irish lacework has caught the attention of the LVMH-backed accessories brand Polène. The Dublin designer, who shows in Paris, has collaborated on a collection of bags that reimagines her signature lacework in leather. The Dublin model Aimee Byrne opened last week’s Valentino show in Paris (the highest-profile spot in a catwalk show) while Pellador’s jerseys and knitwear, inspired by Irish heritage sportswear, are street-style catnip.
So what’s driving the Irish fetishisation? Diane Negra, a professor of film studies and screen culture at University College Dublin, credits the amplification to “perceptions of civic decline in the US and UK”. She says: “Ireland appears as a contrast to the lethal capitalisms of ‘broken Britain’ and Trump’s America.” After Brexit, figures for Irish citizenship from Britain are at an all-time high. Now applications from America are surging.
Along with the Guinnfluencers whose penchant for “splitting the G”, (a drinking game no one who is Irish actually plays) caused a shortage of the stout in the UK, comes the desirability of Irish butter. The New York Times described unwrapping a block of Kerrygold as “almost transcendent”.
For a nation that is generally self-deprecating it’s a lot to digest. The Irish writer Naoise Dolan describes the surge in interest as “well-meaning in most quarters, well-informed in few, but considerably less problematic than it would be if we ourselves had no voice in the matter”.
Barry says she enjoys seeing fans queueing to meet Mescal in “I Heart Irish Boys” T-shirts and watching hip New Yorkers outside a bakery in the East Village that specialises in Irish soda bread. “It often sparks a deeper curiosity in Ireland and Ireland’s history,” Barry says. “They want to find out more. It’s encouraging.”
