Michéal McInerney
he/him
Hag's Head
'Hag’s Head' is an evening wear collection that reflects where I grew up, the Cliffs of Moher, County Clare, and how the landscape, atmosphere, culture, and flora have influenced my aesthetic language. It tells the legend of Hag’s Head, the most westerly point of the cliffs, where a witch fell in love with Cú Chulainn. It was her love that ultimately lead to her demise, whereupon her body transformed the cliff face of Hag’s Head.
The collection is an imagined embodiment of the contradictory traits that define the landscape and people, the brutal, the conservative and the gothic, paired with the beauty, the kinship, and the ethereal. On a personal level, it captures what it feels like to be from somewhere but not belonging to it. It is the love for the place I have acquired in adulthood, tempered with the hate I felt for it as an adolescent.
Look 2, shale bodysuit and cliff edge trousers
Look 3 , shale bias-cut top and skirt
Look 4, Sea Stack Empire Dress with internal shoulder hump corset
Look 5, mourning lichen veiled dress
Research
Hag's Head, photograph
Graphite drawing of bodies like strata
Ink painting of rocks around Hag's Head
Photograph of lichen on limestone
Graphite drawings of figures emerging from cleft rock