Vancouver Fashion Week FW27 interview w/ Fashion Designer Emma Ireland Shepherd of Emma Ireland Designs

Emma Ireland Designs will be showing their latest collection on the runway at Vancouver Fashion Week SS27 on Saturday, Oct. 17th. Tix purchase HERE!
Bio - 

Educated at the renowned Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and Blanche Macdonald Centre in Vancouver, Emma Ireland Shepherd has built a career that combines fashion design, technical development, and education. Alongside her work within the fashion industry and as an instructor at VCAD and technical developer for the brand Aisle, Emma continues to develop her independent label, Emma Ireland Designs. Incorporated in 2019, the brand is an outlet for creative self-expression grounded in strong technical design, craftsmanship, and a distinctly female perspective.

The Emma Ireland Designs aesthetic is best described as hyper-femininity presented with unapologetic confidence. The brand embraces the visual language of girlhood and traditionally feminine craft, using colour, texture, embellishment, and playful details to explore the realities of womanhood. Taking a girly inspiration and using it to ignite a sense of liberation, Emma Ireland Designs is for the rage-filled feminist who still wants to wear the pretty dress. The clothing celebrates femininity not as something passive or performed for others, but as something powerful, complex, and worthy of taking up space.

Following “Love Letter to Girlhood”, Emma’s latest collection, “The Feminine Gaze”, expands upon the brand’s exploration of femininity, this time of that girl all grown up. The collection examines the contradictions inherent in the woman’s experience: softness and anger, beauty and discomfort, vulnerability and defiance. Through playful craftsmanship and colourful designs, “The Feminine Gaze” asks what fashion can look like when women are no longer dressing to be looked at, but instead creating, dressing, and expressing themselves for one another and for themselves.

Interview - 

Please share a bit about your journey to embrace fashion design as a career.

Fashion has been the thing I have consistently loved throughout my life. I was drawn to clothing and making things from a really young age, but moving to New York to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology was when it became clear to me that this could actually be my career. Since then, my path has taken me through a lot of different sides of the industry, including design, technical development, education, and program management. 

I currently work as Design and Product Innovation Lead at Aisle, while continuing to develop Emma Ireland Designs as my own creative practice. I think having both sides of my career is really important to me. My industry work satisfies the very technical, problem-solving part of my brain where I get to be collaborative, while my own brand gives me somewhere to be completely creative and make things simply because I feel strongly about them.

How did you learn your skills?

I studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, where I received my AAS in Fashion Design, and later completed the Global Fashion Design program at Blanche Macdonald in Vancouver. I also completed the Provincial Instructor Diploma Program for Adult Education at Vancouver Community College, which eventually led me into teaching fashion design and developing curriculum. In teaching fashion courses like sewing and pattern making I learned a lot from my students and coworkers that really expanded on what I learned in school. 

My education gave me a really strong technical foundation, particularly in patternmaking, garment construction, technical design, and understanding how clothing is actually made. A lot of my creative development, though, has come from years of experimenting, sewing, making mistakes, working in the industry, and figuring out what feels like me. I am still constantly learning.

Who are you as a designer? Aesthetic? Customer? Brand?

Emma Ireland Designs is hyper-femininity with a bit of a bite to it. I love pink, bows, lace, embroidery, beading, tiny details, exaggerated femininity and anything that feels a little excessively girly. But I am not particularly interested in femininity as something delicate or passive. I am interested in the humour, anger, confidence, friendship, contradictions and shared experiences that exist alongside it. My customer is someone who wants getting dressed to feel personal. She does not necessarily want the most practical or universally appealing thing in the room.

What comes easiest for you as a designer? What is hardest?

Concept and storytelling probably come most naturally to me. I usually know exactly how I want a collection to feel before I know what every garment is going to look like.

The hardest part for me is probably knowing when to stop, although I’m not sure I actually believe in stopping. I love embellishment, layers, trims, texture, colour and tiny handmade details, and I’m a firm believer that if something feels like it needs a bow, a ruffle, some beading and three more charms, it probably does. More is more in my work, and I’ve learned to trust that instinct rather than edit it away. The challenge is less about simplifying and more about making all of those elements feel intentional and like they belong in the same world.

Where do you find inspiration for new collections? How important is colour to your design process?

Most of my inspiration comes from experiences rather than traditional visual references. I am really interested in womanhood, relationships, nostalgia, female friendship, frustration and all the little experiences women immediately recognize in one another. 

Colour is incredibly important to me, I use exclusively warm colours with a strong emphasis on pink and red. Colour is part of the emotional language of not just the collection but the brand itself. I am drawn to colours that feel feminine, nostalgic or slightly playful, but I also like using them in ways that challenge the idea that femininity has to be quiet or tasteful.

Readers would love to know more about the collection you will be showing at Vancouver Fashion Week SS27.

My Spring/Summer 2027 collection is called The Feminine Gaze . It is a continuation of my previous Vancouver Fashion Week collection, Love Letter to Girlhood , but this time that girl has grown up. 

The collection looks at the frustrations, expectations and contradictions of being a woman, and what femininity looks like when it is defined from within rather than through the expectations of other people. There is softness and prettiness in the collection, but there is also anger and defiance. I wanted to explore the idea that you can love all of the traditionally "girly" things without performing femininity for someone else's approval. 

At its core, The Feminine Gaze is about the pleasure of getting dressed for yourself and for other women. It is the outfit your boyfriend hates and thinks is weird, but another girl compliments you on in the bathroom.

Do you have a favorite look in this collection?

My favourite is probably the finale look because to me, it really sums up The Feminine Gaze. It features a long, pale pink metallic organza skirt with a silk taffeta corset that has a heart shape patterned into the bust, topped with a cone-shaped princess hat inspired by one my mom made for me for Halloween when I was a kid. It feels like this very exaggerated, romantic childhood idea of what femininity looks like, but I’ve styled it with reading glasses and a book called How to Offend Men . I love the contradiction of it. She looks like the princess I wanted to be as a little girl, but she has grown up, has opinions, and is probably a little less interested in meeting prince charming.

Where can readers purchase your designs?

Emma Ireland Designs currently operates primarily as an independent creative label rather than through traditional seasonal retail. Many of the pieces I create are one-of-one or produced in very limited quantities, with an emphasis on craftsmanship and making something special rather than mass production. Readers can follow the brand and upcoming releases through Instagram at the link below.

What's next for you as a designer and your brand?

Right now, my focus is on allowing the brand to grow in a way that still feels personal. I am interested in exploring limited releases, special pieces, collaborations, styling and opportunities to get the work in front of more people without losing the handmade quality that makes the brand what it is.

Professionally, in my role as a designer at Aisle I have become even more involved in the development and manufacturing side of the industry. I think everything I learn through that work inevitably makes me a stronger independent designer as well.

One day in the distant future I would love to have a little store that sells handmade goods and custom clothing from my brand and others that align with the brands identity. I’m 28 years old and recently married and bought my first home so I have lots of time to continue my craft and learn before I start selling people products. In the meantime, Emma Ireland Designs is a passion project with no real objective other than as a creative entity.

In closing is there anything else you'd like to share with readers?

I hope people have fun watching this collection. There are definitely serious ideas behind it, but I never want fashion to become so serious that we forget how joyful and ridiculous getting dressed can be. The Feminine Gaze is ultimately a celebration of being one of the girls, being entirely yourself, and wearing the fun dress out to drinks because why not have a little fun?

Links -
Instagram - @emmaireland_designs