Menswear: Cow print denim jacket, sheer polo necks, and palazzo trousers
Rory Parnell Mooney is a men’s fashion designer on a different mission.
He doesn’t want to sell you the white t-shirt you own one hundred times over. He won’t push the kind of jeans that make you feel trussed up and uncomfortable. He’s indifferent to uptight, severe tailoring.
His label Parnell Mooney is motivated by glamour and confidence. He envisions a world where men are free to express themselves and embrace clothing the way their female counterparts have for decades, experimentally and with boldness.
The London-based Irish designer is a rising star in the fashion world. His spring/summer 2021 collection is full of tank tops that are warped, high-waisted trousers that have lace detailing on the front, hoodies and vest tops with adjustable drawstring detailing, and some sharp tailoring with couture twists for good measure.
“It’s an odd balance of stuff,” he said via Zoom, from his East London studio.
In a pandemic stricken world, we already have a tenuous grasp on reality so these seemingly complex clothes make more sense than you may think.
Hoodies and vest tops are as comfortable as they come in stretchy jersey. (On our call, he’s wearing one, in olive, with an adjustable drawstring detail creating an empire waist.) So too are the mismatched pattern flannels shirts — oversized and easy yet visually exciting. The denim, Parnell Mooney said, is the kind that even on days when you don’t feel like getting dressed, you can still feel comfortable and relatively accomplished for making some effort.
As for the more daring pieces? Well, those are for people with an insuppressible urge to get dressed up. At this point, if you keep within the public health guidelines, who cares what you do? Lace-up patent trousers, a cow print denim jacket, sheer polo necks, and palazzo trousers. They mightn’t be essential but there’s a powerful case to be made for feeling good right now.
“Why shouldn’t men want to feel glamorous? It’s nice to allow someone to explore that within a collection,” he said.
His starting points were , a French film depicting a forbidden love story between an aristocrat and the painter commissioned to paint a portrait of her, and , the 1988 comedy film starring Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford. The latter explains the lace-up detailing.
Parnell Mooney explained that the day after watching the film, he arrived in the studio intent on channeling the film through men’s clothes, all the while considering the female characters who wore them in the film. He was enamoured of the pomp and ceremony of 1980s office dressing. It fed into sharp tailoring: blazers, dress shirts, and exaggerated wide-leg trousers.
It’s evident from Parnell Mooney drawing inspiration from female protagonists that he isn’t bothered by or tethered to gender stereotypes: “I would like someone who wears the clothes to play with masculine and feminine codes within themselves. We’re now at this amazing place where men can feel comfortable to explore in the way that women felt comfortable to play with masculinity.”
Parnell Mooney, 30, speaks with quintessential Irish wryness that even years working in the fashion industry cannot dispel. He was born and raised in Galway, where he attended a Jesuit secondary school. Art and design were always encouraged in his family, especially by his mother who spent years taking night classes in art. Moving to London to study fashion seemed like the natural progression.
“I’ve always had a genuine attraction to making beautiful things but a forensic inspection of really beautiful things,” said the designer, who cites conceptual Belgian designers, Ann Demeulemeester and Martin Margiela, as early inspirations.
With the help of Lulu Kennedy, a matriarch of emerging designer talent, Fashion East, and TOPMAN (which used to sponsor the Fashion East show), he launched his namesake label in 2015. The clothes riffed on ritualism and the pomp and ceremony of religious attire.
For young designers, the path is laid out for them: most will rush through their university and out the other side forced to compete with industry heavyweights and an endless list of peers vying for the same achievements.
This troubled Parnell Mooney, who admits he didn’t quite know what he was doing or why he was doing it. He took two years off designing his own label, focusing his attention on tutoring at London’s prestigious Central Saint Martins, where he graduated with an MA himself, as well as “growing up". He got a house, he settled down, and he found a studio that he liked. At the time, building a foundation was more important than building a brand.
The hiatus allowed him to establish what he wanted to make and how he wanted to work. He designs clothes that he himself would want to wear. He doesn’t engage with the fashion week schedule anymore, releasing a selection of imagery through Instagram instead. The feedback, he said, has been valuable: men and women have connected with him through the app, and purchased one-off items. (His web shop will launch imminently.)
His mission is driven by creating empowering clothes to make men, regardless of their shape or size, gender identity or sexual orientation, race or religion, and women too for the heck of it, feel confident about themselves. Most things he designs come with adjustable drawstrings meaning that a woman who is a size 6 can tailor it to her liking in the same way that a man who wears an XL can.
He said: "The only thing that matters is confidence, that power that comes with feeling really good about yourself no matter who you are.”
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