Under the Radar is Highsnobiety's series on brands — both new and established — who skirt mainstream attention but perpetually occupy our mind palace. Following the list of designers we're excited for in 2023, we take a deep dive into Robyn Lynch.
“I think I get my creativity from my dad, he’d always be out the back building mad shit,” recalls Robyn Lynch. “I’ve always been quite a hands-on type of person. I feel like I have about one million different business ideas going on at one time.”
I’m speaking to Lynch via Zoom from the East London studio she’s been working in since launching her eponymous menswear label in 2018, following graduation from Westminster the year prior.
“I used to make all my friends' costumes when we were younger, but then not care about mine,” Lynch says. “It’s almost a fixation of making something for others, a way of creative expression and making clothes, but not for me — which is maybe why I went into menswear.”
Growing up in Malahide, a coastal town near Dublin, Ireland, the designer made the move across the Irish Sea to London in 2015 before interning with Phoebe English and Cottweiler.
“I owe so much to [Cottweiler],” she says. “Every menswear designer that’s about now owes so much to them for the trends we’re seeing nowadays. It’s sad they aren’t around anymore to see the gorpcore trend they started. This was before anyone knew what a hiking boot was!”
Lynch’s time at Cottweiler clearly influenced her contemporary output, which sits at the periphery of activewear and luxury. She even cautiously describes her own brand as “elevated contemporary streetwear.”
“I want my product to be ‘streetwear’ but it doesn’t come with the streetwear price tag because of the fabrications we use,” she explains. “I’m wary of using that term because I don’t want to cosplay streetwear when a jumper costs almost £500.”
Price point is always a topic of conversation within Lynch’s studio. Wholesaling — bulk-selling products to retailers for discounted prices — comes with benefits like more prestigious placement in renowned stores, but it comes at a cost. “[Wholesaling] almost makes the product unattainable to [the people] who I want to wear my stuff. I mean, I could never afford anything I make.”
Despite her elevated costs, the strength of Lynch’s designs and the quality of her products have earned her nominations for a handful of awards. Most recently, Lynch was one of eight finalists for 2023’s International Woolmark Prize, a historic fashion competition previously won by designers like Valentino Garavani, Gabriela Hearst, and Emily Adams Bode Aujla.
As part of her nomination, Lynch was granted $60,000 to create a collection centered around merino wool. The resulting collection not only recognized the strength of Lynch’s cumulative body of work, but also the intuitive references the designer makes to her homeland.
Ireland provides constant inspiration for Lynch: Her Fall/Winter 2023 collection riffed on the “tackiness” of the emerald isle, for instance, and her Spring/Summer 2022 Columbia collaboration was inspired by the outdoorsy gear that Lynch and her friends wore as kids growing up near the Irish coast line.
“[Ireland] is untapped,” says Lynch. “There are so many funny nuances that come from the culture, be it through religion or tradition.
“I would never have delved so much into the culture of Ireland if I still lived there. Moving away from where I grew up has made me so much more patriotic, in a way. There have always been products centered around British culture or Japanese culture, but there wasn’t any Irish-themed stuff happening when I was growing up. It’s fun!”
Lynch’s five-year-old label has already collaborated with partners like Columbia and cycling label Rapha but she has greater aspirations. Down the line, Lynch dreams of partnering with household names like Lacoste and Nike.
“Nike is my main goal. But I generally like to go with collaborations that are a little less obvious,” she explains. “It always needs a personal element, there has to be a story. It can’t be a collaboration for collaboration’s sake.”
Although the fashion industry has served Lynch well during her relatively short lifespan as a standalone label, she’s also aware that the sector is in need of a serious rethink.
“Fashion has many many problems but, speaking from my perspective as a young brand based in London, one of the biggest challenges I face is [the industry’s] inflexible structure of seasonal sales campaigns,” says Lynch.
“The wholesale market forces brands to keep churning out collections season by season — as well as being a financial strain, it can be detrimental to the creative output of the collections, where designers don’t have enough time to fully research and develop ideas.”
Lynch is also conscious of the fashion industry’s flippant stance on sustainability. “It’s a vicious cycle, The speed and demand for newness is preventing the rate of global clothing production from slowing down, which is, of course, causing major environmental and social problems too.”
Though she’s part of the “vicious cycle,” Lynch is doing her part to make a difference.
Her 2021 Columbia collaboration, for example, reworked deadstock garments, while her Rapha capsule featured reflective piping and recycled eco-waste padding from Lynch’s mainline collections.
Small steps, sure, but steps that even some of the industry's biggest labels aren't yet taking. But that's the thing: Lynch is a trailblazer dedicated to her craft, and an extremely pleasant interviewee to boot. That's Irish hospitality for you.
