Fashion and farming unite
Crops will meet crop tops in Kinsale this summer when a new festival plants its seeds.
The inaugural Fashion and Farming Festival will unite the two worlds over one weekend and explore the connection between what we wear and where it comes from.
Whether you're a fashion enthusiast, a farmer or simply curious about the relationship between these two worlds, Fashion and Farming weaves together experiences, projects and stories that might lead to a brighter future for our planet.
This three-day event brings together many of our native and international creative minds, change-makers and entrepreneurs. A unique festival, Fashion and Farming also gathers the innovators, dreamers, fabricators, planners and inventors to sow the seeds for fresh ideas to help mend the farm-to-fabric cycles, which have been damaged in recent decades.
The 2025 Fashion and Farming Festival will host hot conversations from a diverse cross-section of passionate advocates who aim to work for a more sustainable way of life in growing and who want to tell their stories, while educating too.
Speakers include Darina Allen; internationally renowned educator and designer Alison Gault; Blátnaid Gallagher, a passionate advocate for native Irish wool, biodiversity and ethical farming; Irish linen manufacturer Helen Keyes; actors, environmentalists and small farmers Jeremy Irons and Sinead Cusack and more.
Fashion & Farming Festival is the brainchild of Mareta Doyle, who founded the award-winning international Kinsale Arts Festival. She has teamed up with magazine editor Ciara Hunt and award-winning writer and journalist Gemma Tipton on this project.
Mareta said: “Once inextricably linked, fashion and farming are part of our domestic and social fabric, but how we farm and how we create fashion are killing us in today’s world. We believe it’s time to make it, better. The Fashion & Farming Festival aims to help unify the two worlds of fashion and farming to explore ideas on how to farm sustainably, create new fabrics and learn new things from older ways of making. Looking at what we eat, wear and the earth we share, we invite you to join us for a weekend of conversation, provocation, good food, great ideas and intriguing fun in the West Cork coastal town of Kinsale, where fresh ideas take root.”
The festival will take place from 9 – 11 May. See fashionandfarming.com for more.