collection archive
conor o’driscoll 2025 WEST - tank & t-shirt drape: This tank & t-shirt drape is constructed from soft cotton jersey and ribbed jersey, merging two everyday garments into one sculptural form. Sewn together so that the tank twists and folds over the t-shirt, the piece creates a layered effect that transforms a basic silhouette into an experimental styling element. As part of the West collection, it continues the exploration of wrapping and subversion, challenging the straightforward utility of Western dress. The design draws inspiration from Wim Wenders’ 1984 film Paris, Texas, where themes of dislocation, estrangement, and fractured identity are mirrored in the garment’s twisting construction. Just as the film unsettles traditional narratives of the American West, this piece disrupts the conventions of casualwear, turning familiar garments into a layered commentary on memory, place, and transformation.
conor o’driscoll 2025 WEST - self wrap dress shirt: This wrap dress shirt, cut from white brushed cotton shirting, features an extended back yoke that creates the illusion of a shirt folding and wrapping over itself. As part of the West collection, it connects to a series of garments that explore wrapping, layering, and styling as transformative gestures. The design also references Joseph Beuys’ 1974 performance I Like America and America Likes Me, in which the artist swathed himself in felt and shared a confined space with a coyote to confront ideas of violence, healing, and myth within the American landscape. Echoing this act of wrapping as both protection and confrontation, the shirt reinterprets classic Western shirting while subverting its rigidity. By embedding this dialogue into the garment, the piece reflects a broader critique of the West as both a place of mythmaking and a structure to be unraveled.
This handsewn, handknitted dress brings together silk draping, mohair knit, and rose petals encased in pleated silk to create a garment suspended between fragility and edge. The mohair tank was knit by hand in ivory wool with varied needle sizes, resulting in an irregular, organic structure that shapes itself freely on the body. Behind it, a silk drape softens the silhouette, while pleated silk petals are stitched and tacked into place, adding dimension and movement. The process of free-knitting and hand-sewing emphasizes improvisation, imperfection, and material sensitivity, allowing the piece to evolve as it was made.
Part of the Lost Highway collection, the look draws on David Lynch’s 1997 film and its enigmatic blonde character, Alice Wakefield / Renee Madison (Patricia Arquette). Her portrayal of duality, allure, and disquiet inspired the garment’s play of exposure and concealment — sheer silk against textured knit, delicacy against rough edges. The petals suggest both beauty and decay, mirroring the film’s tension between desire and unease. In this way, the dress becomes an embodiment of “perfect imperfection,” a fragile yet confrontational piece that reimagines sex appeal and vulnerability through a distinctly avant-garde lens.
This full look from the Lost Highway collection merges intricate craftsmanship with cinematic reference, drawing inspiration from David Lynch’s 1997 film. The ascot shirt and soft corset reveal detailing that is often invisible at first glance: most of the garment is hand-sewn, from the intentional bunching on the sleeves to the bound neckline. Both pieces feature ties at the back that cinch and shape the body, while the front soft corset continues an ongoing dialogue in the designer’s work with corsetry, highlighted here through pad stitching and even masking tape as a design element. Sheer silk boxer shorts function as a styling layer, offset by a leather holster and glove, while an unreleased fringe bag and black boots complete the ensemble.
Across the look, printed and patched motifs of spilled oil run down the garments, increasing in scale as they descend the body. This imagery anchors the collection’s central metaphor, referencing oil as both stain and substance, disorder and transformation. Just as Lost Highway unsettles linear narrative with its spiraling, fractured storyline, the garments destabilize formality: the tailored upper layers suggest status and control, while the look gradually slips into darkness and misalignment through fabric, silhouette, and detail. Through this visual descent, the collection situates itself at the threshold between structure and collapse, a fashion parallel to Lynch’s disorienting vision of the American psyche.
conor o’driscoll 2024 - Lost Highway
conor o’driscoll 2024 Lost Highway - mink collar: This mink collar, from the Lost Highway collection, is rooted in the duality of Alice / Renee’s beauty — particularly the haunting scene where her blonde hair glows against the car. The closure takes the form of a key, evoking the constant presence of cars throughout the film and their role as symbols of power, escape, and fate. Crafted from mink repurposed from an old fur coat, the piece is lined with silk and finished with a layered internal print. Due to its delicacy, the entire garment is handsewn, a process that underscores its fragility and intimacy.
By embedding references to Lynch’s cinematic language, the collar reflects the film’s obsession with surfaces and illusions: glamour edged with unease, beauty caught in the headlights. The use of reclaimed fur complicates ideas of luxury, situating the garment within a narrative of reuse, distortion, and transformation — echoing Lost Highway’s blurred identities and shifting realities
