With lounge and activewear moved to the forefront of retail in the last year, formalwear was not just relegated to the back, but asked to wait in the changing room. Preferably, behind the curtain, where no one could see it. For the king of occasion wear, Don O’Neill, this meant production halted on his much celebrated, New York-based brand Theia Couture. He didn’t know it then, but worse was to come.

The Irish designer first won the attention of celebrities, buyers, editors and consumers alike in his role as creative director of Badgley Mischka diffusion label. They were the golden boys of couture, red carpet, evening wear and glamour. Vogue’s editor-in-chief Anna Wintour was a huge fan and German clothing company Escada had backed them. There were millions of dollars being poured into them. Their runway shows in New York featured supermodels and every major A-lister in Hollywood was wearing their clothes. It was a huge success story. But in the end, all of those $15,000 or $20,000 dresses ended up bankrupting them. Escada pulled their funding and they were a free-floating entity looking for a backer.

The Canadian company JS Group International bought the license to produce their evening wear and needed someone to revive the brand, but make it affordable. Having worked alongside Carmen Marc Valvo, O’Neill was handpicked as a shoo-in for the role. “Long story short, I took the job. Within a month I had a fully-fledged team and within three months I had a full collection,” he said.

That first collection, which the JS Group hoped would do $1 million, ended up doing $9 million in their first year of business. Three years later the license for Badgley Mischka was due for renewal, but the JS Group opted instead to set O’Neill up with his own label, such was the strength of his reputation.

“They wanted to call it Don O’Neill New York. As tempting as that was to have a label with my name in it, something told me this doesn’t end well for people who sign their name away to big corporations,” he said.

Instead, they called it Theia Couture after a goddess-like dress the designer was working on at the time.

That was 12 years ago. Back then, the world was in turmoil for a different reason. “I remember Saks Fifth Ave was like a fire sale. There were Christian Louboutin shoes on sale for $50, the world of luxury and retail collapsed. The major department stores were cancelling their orders for the spring collection, they didn’t even want to take them into their stores, it was a disaster, and here I was making a brand new label, and a collection they would need to make room for in stores when they were already throwing stuff out the window,” he said.

O’Neill managed to convince many of his store contacts to buy into his first AW09 collection, like only a Kerry man could. “The orders weren’t huge, but they bought, including Saks and Neiman Marcus. Those few pieces we squeezed in opened doors. We got our foot in and had a fully-fledged business up and running within a year.”

Since then, the brand grew to five collections, including evening wear, couture, bridal, bridesmaids and a less expensive collection called Love Theia.

O’Neill was dressing everyone from the red carpet to royalty, and counted Oprah Winfrey and Meghan Markle as clients. Then Covid-19 broke out, the music stopped, the party scene was upended.

Upended by Covid

O’Neill with his husband Pascal Guillermie.

By April, the last stragglers may have been slow to leave the dance floor, but business was grinding to a halt. Red carpet events turned virtual, weddings became small family affairs, leaving little reason for anyone to invest in a knockout floor-swishing ballgown.

“It takes serious investment, time and energy and I’m not sure if I see myself in a basement trying to sew a dress.”

Don O’Neill

“When Covid hit, we knew we hit a bump in the road. We were generating between $12-14 million, so we knew we would be going back, but didn’t know how many of us because we anticipated a trimming back of overheads as the market had collapsed. And then we didn’t. It was like the rug was pulled,” says O’Neill.

A new management team was brought in to restructure the company and “someone decided Theia was no longer relevant, or at least the version I made”, says O’Neill over the phone from the Brooklyn brownstone he shares with his husband Pascal Guillermie. “The design and sales teams were let go and almost the entire staff replaced overnight.”

The finality of losing a job he loved was a shock to the system. “Losing Theia hit me over the head, and I was staggering around dazed. I realised I was actually burnt out. I had been burning the candle at both ends and in the middle. There was a lot happening in my studio and the cacophony of noise and the level of creativity required for all the collections was like having five different radio stations playing at the same time all day.”

“I don’t see myself starting from scratch”

Meghan Markle in Theia and husband Prince Harry (Getty)

Once he recovered from the initial shock, O’Neill got busy writing a book about his life, from growing up in Ballyheigue to working in London and Paris (for Christian Louboutin), and then New York. Simultaneously, he’s been plotting his next move.

“I was surrounded by a hands-off investor who put the tools around me. I put in the work and put the talent around me. For something to happen again, it would need to be a similar situation. I don’t see myself starting from scratch. I’m 54 and I know how hard and challenging this is, you don’t lick it off the ground. It takes serious investment, time and energy and I’m not sure if I see myself in a basement trying to sew a dress,” he said.

I have this incredible history and experience behind me and now I just want to find where I should focus this energy.”

Reflecting on the state of the fashion industry O’Neill is optimistic positive change is afoot. “Everyone was burned out, churning out collection after collection. With the department stores, if it didn’t sell you paid markdown money because you had to guarantee their profit margins. It was extortion. And if you didn’t play the game they wouldn’t buy the collection. It was a crazy circle, meanwhile the designers are making more and more dresses to go into the store. It was overproduction,” he says.

“The textile industry is one of the most polluting industries on the planet and creative people, by their nature, don’t want to damage the planet in any way. Everyone graduating now is aware of sustainability and fair trade, it’s being drilled into them now. Whereas the older corporations are still operating in the past.

“I can only hope that Covid teaches us a lesson to slow down and be aware the planet is not an infinite resource. You can’t keep pulling stuff out of it and think that it all somehow renews itself.”

Don O’Neill

“They are getting a wake up call and are trying to be more responsible, but that costs more money and that’s where you butt heads. When the CFOs are looking at the figures and anything that’s sourced responsibly costs more money, you have to pay people who make it at every level all the way up, and the fabric has to be properly produced and certain chemicals can’t be used, there are so many different processes to be authentic and true to the process and there are designers out there beginning to lead the way, but the product is expensive.

“I mean buying a $3 T-shirt you really have to think twice – why is it $3? Is the woman who made this able to feed herself at the end of the day? Covid has shone a light on that, but it really remains to be seen how many companies are going to wake up and realise that overconsumption is not the way forward. But I know myself companies want to grow. They want to be bigger and more profitable than they were last year. No one is content with what they have now. Everyone wants to do better, they want another $600 million in sales or if it’s Gucci, they want another billion dollars in sales, which means they’re producing another 600 million Gucci bags or whatever it is. At what point are the corporations going to be content with what they have that they don’t need to overproduce?

Khloe Kardashian showcasing a Don O’Neill designed dress.

“There’s a niche for smaller individual designers, and there are so many entrepreneurs at home in Ireland, doing knitwear by themselves or leather goods or basket weaving or making accessories, smaller, hands-on at-home enterprises and you can see who they are, their background, you know it’s handcrafted. It’s a slow fashion movement and I hope that there are more fashion consumers who are aware of them and wearing them and promoting them against the big corporations who are gobbling up the planet,” he says.

“I can only hope that Covid teaches us a lesson to slow down and be aware the planet is not an infinite resource. You can’t keep pulling stuff out of it and think that it all somehow renews itself. I’m hoping that there will be a conscious shift, but I’m also looking at this country and what’s happening here and the fact that 72 million people voted for a man who thinks climate change is a hoax. I think it requires more effort on the part of those of us who seek change to do our best to make the change happen and somehow influence the other half. Keep being positive and pouring light out there in the hope that more people will wake up.”

In terms of his own future, O’Neill is more optimistic. “I’m excited. I feel like I shed something. Even though I had something quite extraordinary, there was a weight to it and that weight has been lifted so there is a blank slate ahead of me, but it’s not a dark one. I feel there’s limitless potential of something extraordinary in front of me, but it’s so bright I can’t see what it is. It’s blindingly bright.”