Meet Bridget Geoghegan from Mise Tusa
Mise Tusa is a slow fashion brand from Co. Galway, Ireland.
The best laid plans often go awry.
Bridget Geoghegan returned home to Galway for a weekend in March 2020. Unless you are a very young reader indeed, we all know what happened next.
In the quiet, tumultuous days that followed, an idea floated into the Geoghegan household. In addition to a law degree and a masters focused on garment workers’ rights, Bridget had just completed several years of marketing experience with Selfridges. Bridget’s mother, Meritta is a clothing designer, who founded the Ail Ruin design centre in 1995.
A long held dream of combining their personalities and abilities suddenly became tangible and after many months of preparation, the slow fashion brand Mise Tusa was launched in September 2021.
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Meaning ‘Me You’ in Irish, there is a beautiful duality to Mise Tusa. These clothes are meant to be worn and seen, they are a invitation to conversation.
There are currently two main collections; Movement is soft, silky, flowy and Imagine is more structured, professional, daring.
Imagine contains several sub collections, which barely contain the breadth of Meritta’s creative vision.
One particularly striking piece is the tweed Draiocht coat, which means magic in Irish.
‘It's amazing. Mom has perfected it over the past year. It is a long coat which can quickly become a jacket.
People love the one of a kind, special pieces.
The Dreamer sub-collection features an eye catching print on deadstock Italian Linen. The print can be found on a selection of shirts, bags, dresses and trousers but the headline piece is, without a doubt, the feminine and playful Mamma Mia wrap dress. With a generous skirt and an elegant cut, the wearer will look and feel as confident as the name of the dress might suggest.
The use of deadstock fabric is of great importance to Meritta and Bridget.
‘Mom has been in the industry for such a long time and we've been lucky to develop good relationships with people in the [luxury fashion] industry. By using industry surplus fabric, we help to reduce waste in the fashion industry and contribute to the circular economy.’
In house design and manufacturing allows an extraordinary level of control over fabric scraps; Meritta has experimented with the use of leftover fabrics in scrunchies, small pillows and most recently, the magnificent ‘Magnifica’ wraps. Hand knitted with strips of the pink Italian linen, these unique, one of a kind designs are net like, both weighty and airy.
Inspired by Meritta & Bridget’s shared love of yoga, the Movement capsule collection uses a silky soft bamboo fabric.
‘In January 2020, my mom & I went on an adventure together to gain our 200hr Yoga Teacher training certificate at the Suryalila Centre.’
As newly fledged yoga teachers, the philosophy of freedom through movement trickled into the design process; a capsule collection in bamboo fabric was developed.
‘The collection was originally designed for yoga, but it has been so interesting to see women wear it for travelling, for work and even to weddings.
The collection has three colour ways; the idea is you can mix and match the different shapes and colours.
The Goddess Wrap, which is one of my favourite pieces, for example, can be worn in so many ways. It can be worn as a crop top or back to front.
It is quite interesting to see people experiment with the pieces in store. That's why we feel very lucky to have the physical space in Clarinbridge. The designs are constantly evolving.
Fabric choices are also fluid. A huge amount of time is devoted to finding new, innovative fabrics; in the meantime, bamboo is the right choice for this collection.
‘Bamboo wears really well. It's super soft on the skin, which is great for traveling and we found that it helps to regulate body temperature. It's stretchy; you can tie it in different ways, but when you wash it again, it goes back to it's original shape. It does have a small percentage of elastane to keep the shape of the piece, but we are constantly researching other fabric options.
We went to the Sustainable Fabric show in Paris and I was at the Global Fashion summit in Copenhagen a few weeks ago.
Was there room for smaller brands at the Global Fashion summit?
‘I think so. People are always interested to hear from smaller scale slow fashion brands.
As a small brand, we understand how hard certain things can be; you want to be transparent and talk about the things that you're doing well, but also you don’t want to oversell what you're doing.
In a way, I empathise with big brands trying to make changes while running!
You’ve worked with high profile companies such as Selfridges in the past. Would you like to see Mise Tusa stocked in luxury department stores?
‘Well, we make everything in our own studio and that is really important to us.
I speak to a lot of other designers in Ireland who want to keep manufacturing local to support the local economy with good jobs, but skilled workers are relatively hard to find. There are no fashion manufacturing apprenticeships and we are now at a point where we have a lot of great Irish designers, but the actual capacity to produce more isn't really there.
So you know, that does limit us in some ways.
A limit which is not without it’s advantages.
Mise Tusa is a passion project for Mom and I.
We have found a sweet spot with our own community focused store; there is a real freedom in that. We can load up our camper van and do a pop up in Paris or London.
Stocking in other stores is not really on our radar, but you never know either!
Let’s talk about that Paris pop up.
Two weeks before launching the brand, Bridget & Meritta attended a fabric show in Paris. It was a trip filled with synchronicities and opportunities; as they wandered through the city, they imagined having a store in Paris. A new friend serendipitously gave them the phone number of a woman who manages a gallery space.
A few months later, the camper van was packed and Mise Tusa headed to Paris to hold a pop up shop at the iconic Jardin du Palais-Royal during Paris Fashion week. The Isabel Marant show was literally outside the door of the gallery space. Very interesting people from all over the world dropped in to see the beautiful new Irish brand.
‘It was our first time doing something abroad so it was really nice to see how people were so interested in Irish design and the fact that they were meeting the person who actually made it.
It gave us a taste of how the international market views Irish fashion and definitely gave us the confidence to go do something similar in the future.’
Mise Tusa was one of 12 companies invited to join the new Circular by Design programme.
Bridget and Meritta have also been involved with the CFA Circular by Design programme, which describes itself of a first of its kind professional training programme for the textile industry in Ireland.
‘For us, it's always nice just to connect with other designers and people with similar values. Sometimes when you're doing your thing, it can almost be a bit isolating and you need to make a big effort to actually connect with other people in the space.
I think it seems like the fashion industry in Ireland has changed for the better. The idea of competitiveness is very outdated now. People are actually realising, you know, if someone likes what you do, they might like something that someone else does, and that's a good thing.
We should all be encouraging collaboration as much as possible, like buying and supporting each other and working together.’
Speaking of collaboration…
Mise Tusa offers an eclectic range of accessories from other designers, including a shoe brand named Papucei, which is manufactured in Romania, by a mother and daughter team. Also in store are jewellery by Ennistymon artist Rowena Sheen and scarves by Rita Oates.
‘We feel like their work really complements our work. When we went to Paris we brought pieces from other designers too. We want to showcase the work of others to promote slow fashion.’
One of the advantages of having your own retail space is the potential to play with billboards. On one side of the building is a striking photo from the first collection.
‘We had a couple of pieces in the collection which had a Celtic Warrior goddess vibe. The photograph on the billboard features a brown wool crepe dress (which is very elegant) and a sheep's wool collar from a local maker near us.
Mise Tusa’s target audience might be poetically described as women who have a spark of that Celtic goddess within them; Bridget describes the brand in more prosaic terms, as being aimed at a psychographic rather than a demographic.
‘Our customers are a mix of women of all ages, backgrounds & professions, but I think the common thing is that they appreciate good local design and the shopping experience. I like to think that when someone does come into our shop, it's quite a welcoming environment. We love having a chat with our customers.’
The success story of slow fashion is beginning to attract attention from other industries.
Bridget was recently invited to speak to the Shopify team in Galway. (Shopify is an e-commerce platform for online sales.) Bridget built the Mise Tusa website herself using Shopify and credits the platform for simplifying the once gargantuan task of creating an online store.
‘I love the Shopify platform; it gives you a huge amount of control over your own store.
You can buy direct from our website, but it's really fun when people come into the shop and they already know the name of the pieces!’
Bridget also has a personal website which explores her own interests of brand consultancy, social justice, yoga and weighty topics such as the human rights impacts of fracking and gender-based domestic violence against women.
Speaking of social justice, how can we make slow fashion accessible to a wider range of people, despite a prohibitive cost of production?
‘Mom and I talk about this a lot. What we do is high end and the price point is reflective of the materials used. We are aware of the fact that it's not the most accessible. We are not an alternative to fast fashion.
I do think it would help if there was more capacity for local production in Ireland, if there were spaces for brands to work together and keep the running costs low.’
‘We need to realise that buying something every week is not sustainable. I watched a documentary recently called The Minimalists; essentially they were saying that despite corporate jobs, many significant investments were out of reach and minor impulse purchases allowed people to feel a sense of ownership.’
Bridget believes a big part of the solution is a mindset shift towards buying less & repairing or working with what you already have. And if you were to figure the cost per wear, if you wear a coat for 20 years, it becomes very cost effective indeed.
That’s the magic of investment.
Or should I say draiocht?
Please follow Mise Tusa on Instagram and visit their website to shop delicious Irish slow fashion.
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Dr Aoife Long is a fashion writer and a creative director at Spirit and Luxury.
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Beautiful, thank you for this insightful article.