Anne moves from cows to couture

FROM cattle to cashmere, Anne Marsh McMahon is changing her focus. With two decades of farming under her bespoke belt, the Broadford woman returned to college in 2010 to study fashion. She completed the course in the Limerick College of Further Education in May this year, emerging with City and Guilds and FETAC awards in advanced fashion design in textiles and knitwear. Now she is focusing on her new business, AMM Designs, offering jewellery, hats and garments of her own design.
“I am a farmer,” Anne says. She has been farming her own land for the past seven years, rearing suckler cows but farming is in her blood.
“I have been farming for the last 20 years. When I left school, I stayed at home with my dad on the farm. I had the opportunity to go to fashion college in Mallow but I went to agricultural college instead. I have always been knitting and sewing down the years. My mother always did it. She made her own bridesmaid dresses and hats for her sisters and she made our clothes when we were young, so I learned it from her really,” she recalls.
Despite picking up the knitting needles regularly, Anne found it difficult to complete projects.
“I don’t sit down and put my feet up when I come in, in the evening. I would always have been knitting and crocheting and so on. I would start a jumper and never finish it and that is why I went back to school, so I would get the finishing right. That is why I went at the jewellery design too. It takes less time so I could get it finished,” she explains.
“I always loved beading and all of that kind of thing too and I love pearls. When I would go to a wedding I loved to make something for myself but I wouldn’t have time to make a dress. So in order to make something unique for myself, I would buy the dress and make the jewellery. Then I started making jewellery for my sisters and friends and it evolved from there really,” she adds.
While Anne enjoyed different elements of the design process, she wanted to bring all her skills together.
“Before I went back to college I had so many garments I hadn’t finished. I wanted to get the finishing right so I could expand and make clothes. I wasn’t satisfied making the jewellery to go with a bought outfit and that is the main reason I went back. I always wanted to do something in fashion because I am constantly drawing or knitting or sewing when I am not tearing around doing everything else.”
Anne loves to work using a variety of media enjoying, among other things, shaping bog oak and she particularly loves manipulating fabrics.
“I am more into texture and colours and mixing different prints. I will work with anything. I would take a chance on anything. In the knitting, I love the Italian Collection wool but I would mix fine knits and chunky and everything else. There are very few places to get material locally. You have the basics but you have to go further afield for everything else. I love to manipulate fabric. I like to make my own where possible, whether by cutting and slicing it or dying it when I have time.”
Changing her business focus from farming to fashion was also a social move for Anne. “Farming is a solitary life. You are on the land all the time and I needed to get out and meet people and make friends. I have a son and daughter aged 16 and 13. I have stayed at home with them for the last 12 years and this is part of my taking control of my own life. I had given my time to the kids and cows for long enough, so it was time to give myself some ‘me time’.”
Right now, Anne is working hard on expanding AMM Designs. “I want people to be able to walk into my studio and be able to get their dress, be it textile or knit, along with a hat and jewellery to match. At the moment, a lot of people in Clare, if they are going to a wedding, travel to Limerick for their dress or outfit and to Galway to get their hats and they end up having to trek across the country. I don’t want people here to have to travel to get their different pieces. I want my studio to be a one-stop-shop for women to come in and walk out with everything they need. That is what I aiming for,” Anne outlines.
Some of Anne’s work, along with work by Michelle Courtney Ryan and Kaitlin McGrath, will be on display as part of the Clare and Irish Fashion Designers Showcase in The Rowan Tree on October 25 as part of Ennis Fashion Week. The show will also feature hairstyles by Bridget Haren and millinery by Sinéad Madden.