Cork designer Sinéad Keary on finding her path in fashion and her successful brand

As Cork designer Sinéad Keary launches her capsule summer collection, she talks to Mary-Cate Smith about building her fashion empire, making your wardrobe work for you, and why women need to get better at talking about money

Sinéad Keary at The Westbury, Dublin. Picture: Bríd O'Donovan.

Sat, 19 Apr, 2025 - 12:45

Mary Cate Smith

From a young age, Mallow entrepreneur Sinéad Keary wasn’t afraid to put in the graft. Even if it was just a part-time gig at Topshop.

“I remember going in with a big presentation with ways to wear outfits,” she recalls. “The interviewer was like — no-one asked you to do this, Sinéad. Where are you off to?

“That’s how much I wanted it though,” she says. Keary, who is the daughter of Bill Keary, the man behind the eponymous car dealership, and a sister to Sarah Keary, a make-up artist with her own collection of products, clearly has business in the blood.

Keary remembers, at age 11, attending a boarding school in Thurles, spending “all week” planning the outfit she’d wear to the train station.

“I was lending things to my friends,” she says, as she recalls those early years divvying out fashion advice to her classmates, early indications of where her talents might lie post-education.

For the ineffably cool “it girls” of the ’90s and ’00s, former high street giant Topshop was king, and landing that part-time job in the Opera Lane store piqued her interest far more than her academic studies.

“I did Arts in UCC, I didn’t really know what to be doing,” she admits. “All I knew was I loved fashion. I didn’t know how I’d make that a job.”

After college, she took up a full-time role with the high street giant and moved to Dublin to work in the flagship store, the mecca for the Manic Pixie Dream Girl whose currency was ditsy floral tea dresses and Jamie jeans.

Quickly progressing through the ranks, she worked her way up to the styling and visual merchandising teams in the St Stephen’s Green shop.

“Fashion is not the clearest career path. I felt lost along the way,” she says, “[But] I knew if I rolled up my sleeves and worked hard, it would guide me somewhere.”

Topshop led her to the personal shopping department of Brown Thomas, where she began to develop her own repeat customer client base. As her reputation grew, so did her Instagram following, which she was now using to find clients.

Sinéad Keary: “Fashion is not the clearest career path. I felt lost along the way." Picture: Bríd O'Donovan.

“I was gaining a very small following, and that grew steadily over the years.”

That following now sits pretty at 47k for Keary’s personal Instagram (and over 105k for her fashion label).

“It was a really interactive following. I never did an ad. All I wanted to do was share what I was loving and my top tips on what to wear for your height and shape.”

Sinéad Keary The Label was born when the personal stylist noticed followers and clients were crying out for a sartorial uniform of sorts.

“Everyone was chasing the next viral dress, but people were forgetting the basics,” she says. Inspired by her sister Sarah’s success launching her own makeup brand By SK, Keary bit the bullet and went out on her own for the first time in her professional career.

“I was able to leave a full-time job that I loved and start a personal shopping business. I was booked up to six weeks in advance.”

During lockdown, she delved into her savings to self-fund the business of her dreams — an ethical fashion brand with staying power.

“The whole world went into lockdown. All the shops were closed. I had no work. This thing, it was all in my head, and I never had time to do it until then.”

At first, she was reticent.

Sinéad Keary: “I was walking on the beach that day and the phone just started blowing up. The website kept crashing.” Picture: Bríd O'Donovan.

“I thought, maybe this isn’t a good time. The world was a scary place. But I got working on it and I launched it in November 2020, and that’s the day it all sold out.

“I covered the chunk of the initial order with my own money. I wanted to have full control over it.”

In fact, she made over €60k in sales that day, an unprecedented amount for an unprecedented time.

“I was walking on the beach that day and the phone just started blowing up. The website kept crashing.”

Today, the label is a one-stop shop for women looking to build their dream capsule wardrobe, with top influencers Lydia Mullen, and most recently Sophie Murray, bringing even more women into the fold.

“I wanted to build a capsule wardrobe — cami, blazer, jeans — clothes you could wear as separates and mix and match [because] in my personal shopping days, these were the things that would always sell out in the shops,” Keary explains.

But she felt she could curate a considered edit which would use what she’d learned from years of personal shopping to ensure those staple pieces were items you’d want to wear again and again.

Just five years after launching, Sinead Keary the Label now has pop-up stores in Kildare Village and Dundrum Town Centre, and she is just back from shooting a campaign in Paris.

“I knew that a cami would be better if it had a bra hook in it,” she says by way of example, “nobody likes anything clingy on the tummy.”

For her latest collection, summer linens, she focused on a strong double-lining for the white linen shorts to ensure they wouldn’t be transparent, while the material is one that is resistant to creasing.

“No one wants to use an iron on holiday,” she says.

Just five years after launching, the brand now has pop-up stores in Kildare Village and Dundrum Town Centre, and she is just back from shooting a campaign in Paris.

Keary’s campaign imagery draws on real life inspiration rather than following the fashion world’s usual ultra-polished look. She credits her collaborators with helping her find what resonates with her audience, photographer Naomi Gaffey being one.

“She shoots products on how it looks best on a woman. We have that relationship where I almost don’t have to give too much of a brief anymore.”

Unlike a lot of high street brands, Keary also caters for sizes six up to 20.

A linen dress from Sinéad Keary's latest collection

“I’m the fit model. I’m a size medium. I’m not the UK six that most fit models are in design houses.”

Thanks to the democratisation of fashion, we’re seeing more diversity in the fashion world. From Celia Holman-Lee to Grece Ganham, Keary believes true style transcends age.

“Our target audience is not a single age. We have everyone from their 20s up to 60s, 70s, and it’s growing all the time.”

Plans for the future are already in the mix.

“Our turnover doubled last year, and we have great plans — we’re plus on the year so far.”

The Sunday Times reported that the brand enjoyed a multimillion euro turnover last year, but Keary is “mortified” when I start talking about figures.

“I get so uncomfortable speaking about money,” she admits. “I need to get better at it. Women need to get better at talking about money. We really struggle with it.”

It is perhaps surprising given that her father, Bill Keary, is the man behind a car dealership with reported turnover of €320m last year. But Keary says he started from humble beginnings, selling cars for his uncle Paddy, and he has certainly taught his children the value of money.

White linen shorts from Sinéad Keary The Label

“I was working as a receptionist in my family’s garage at the age of 15. It was very much, ‘there’s a phone there, you can answer it, and you can get some money then.’”

What did she learn from the Keary patriarch?

“It’s not all passion,” she says. “There’s plenty of stress too. I was very much around the highs and lows of the business. I’ll never forget the years when Dad was trying to keep the business alive during the
recession.”

There was constant chat of business in the house, Keary adds, which surely helped her and her sister with their own ambitions.

“I think that was a great thing to be around,” she says. “I went into business not with a rosy ‘this is going to be so easy’ [attitude] but more of a realistic view of what running a business is like.

“I’m so proud of this business and I’m very, very proud to be from Cork.”