Sinéad O’Dwyer and Sharna Osborne’s Fashion Week Collab is a Sticky Halcyon Dream
Interview: Gina Tonic | Director: Sharna Osborne | 360 DOP/Edit: Anastasia Karkazis | DOPs: Sharna Osborne, Sebastian Bjerregaard | Editor: Sharna Osborne | Cinematic Grade: Fox Bamber Barron | Car-door graphic: Vrinda Jelinek | Styling: Ai Kamoshita | Casting: Emma Matell | Hair: Anna Cofone | MUA: Trine Skjøth | Casting Assistant: Oliwia Jancerowicz | Executive Producer: Alex Papatheodorou | Producers: Claire Murphy, Carlo Molino | Models: Mahalia, Alva Claire, Escarleth Pozo, Ottilie Landmark, Ranni Hawae, Laura Kolborg Sorensen, Hannah Coffey, Laura Kolborg, Sorensen, Khan, Ulrikke Skotte-Lund, Josefine Jensen, Samia Dan | Polyester Edit: Charlotte Amy Landrum
Make it stand oIut
Irish designer and Polyester fave Sinead O’Dwyer is immortalising our summer memories in a brand new series of experimental fashion films directed by Sharna Osbourne, titled Everything Opens To Touch. Sharna’s thoughtful lens paints a vivid picture of emotional intensity - from the conception of a crush, to the hunger of intimacy to the backdrop of an endless wet, hot, summer.
With a central theme of memory, the mis-match collage effect is accompanied with poetry by author Anastasiia Fedorova. The film itself is set in Copenhagen, where Sinead showed her work in 2024 for the first time. The films highlight, alongside the sticky sense of summer, the S/S 25 collection’s playful puff dresses, new denim pieces and signature silhouettes. It evokes feelings of youth, torn between teenaged boredom and a lust for life.
Watch the four short films as presented by Polyester and read our interview with Sinead below.
This is my second time attending a LFW presentation from you that eschews the traditional runway format. Why are you so drawn to different ways of showcasing a new collection?
As I was showing in CPH with the Zalando Visionary Award, I invited Sharna come and do a project together that we would show during LFW. I think it just grew from there, it was an opportunity to do something that told more of the emotional story of the collection, or a different side to it. It was fun to reframe the memories that inspired the collection that took place in North Carolina in CPH with a local cast (and my wife who is from Copenhagen!) I think I love to work this way in layers because it deepens the world of the collection, it feels meaningful to spend more time with the work in this way.
Where did the title ‘EVERYTHING OPENS TO TOUCH’ come from?
It comes from a poem I commissioned from writer Anastasia Federova, which was inspired by the same memories from my first time falling in love while away from home for the first time, I was living in North Carolina. I am quite obsessed w the poem, it feels so good to me, Anastasia is such a wonderful writer and she really got it. The idea of a poem began as we were working with hair and Care for the 2nd time to bring a runway experience to blind and low vision guests and I wanted there to be a text based emotive aspect to the show as part of the soundscape, something textural and sensual to mimic the fabrics and atmosphere of the styling and casting and clothes. When it came to naming the collection we all (the team: Emma, Ottilie, Katy, Jade..) chose a sentence from the poem that felt right out loud.
I love seeing recurring characters in the Sinead O’Dwyer cinematic universe from repeat models to working with Sharna again and again. What motivates you to keep reusing teams and creatives in your output?
The more you work with someone the better and better it gets, I think especially with Sharna it’s been a really formative creative relationship, first making work for 1 granary VOID like 4/5years ago. The way she sees my muses I feel like is how I see them and that language has been really exciting to expand upon exploring emotion and memory together. Its often quite an abstract and creative process and the outcome is always thoughtful and intuitive. Same goes with Emma, we are growing together and it feels good to lean into that and have us really know each other as creatives.
I found it interesting to combine eroticism with themes of memory, as we can often reflect on sexual experiences differently to how we experienced them. What made you want to combine both in this collection?
My first love was also my first girlfriend so it felt very raw. I love thinking about those sorts of gritty memories in my work. I think remembering what it is to really feel deeply in a moment when everything feels quite desensitised feels good to me and helps me find meaning in the work but also in life.
You’ve used new materials for S/S 25 that we haven’t seen from you before and I love how they match the energy and aesthetics of the film and visuals, do these develop alongside each other or do you create the presentation concepts after the collection is completed?
It all develops at the same time. I was thinking about prickly heat that makes your eyes trip out and I think that naturally came out in the colours and I also was very drawn to blue denim which also makes sense with my time in the US.. We mimicked the denim in the fully-fashioned knitwear as well with raw-edges and frayed patches in the shapes of butt-plugs. The cream crumpled waxed poplin made sense to with a more easy tumbled feeling.
