Designer Sonya Lennon wears ‘what makes me happy, regardless of whether it’s appropriate’

“I will wear what makes me happy, regardless of whether it’s appropriate. I’m probably going to be overdressed in the room. That doesn’t bother me,” she tells Magazine+.

“It starts with me and what I would enjoy wearing and what might make me feel good. My experience as a middle aged working mother is very resonant to the women who wear our clothes. I suppose I would probably be at the outer reaches of confidence in terms of how I dress. I don’t really care what anybody else thinks,” she adds with a laugh.

Sonya’s path to where she is today wasn’t exactly linear. She had intended to go to art college, but wound up moving into fashion retail and eventually television, where she presented Off The Rails with Brendan Courtney.

It became a match made in heaven as the pair now head up Lennon Courtney together. At 51, Sonya went back to university for a masters degree in business equity, diversion and inclusion.

Their latest collection is on sale in Kilkenny Design, and features bold and bright colours for spring. It’s inspired by a pagan goddess named Ostara, and celebrates a new dawn.

“We talked a lot about this, myself and Brendan, about where we are in our lives, what’s important to us and it felt like a real moment to re-evaluate and to surface what’s important. So many of the pagan themes are grounded in the earth and in humanity and relationships and love and respect for ourselves. We just thought it was a really beautiful message to wrap around what we’re doing,” Sonya explains.

Of course, Lennon Courtney are in a new dawn of their own, since the brand ended a partnership with Dunnes Stores and pivoted to a new collaboration with Kilkenny Design.

Designing and working in a pair can be harmonious, but it isn’t always easy, Sonya says. “Business is hard and there are hard decisions to be made along the road of it and hard conversations, and I think we’d be very naive to think that everything was going to be hunky dory all the time,” she explains.

“But I think what we do have is a very strong bond since we were put together back in 2008. We have an extraordinary ability to design together in flow. I think that’s when we’re at our absolute happiest because we’re extraordinarily aligned in terms of what’s right down to the tiniest detail, and that’s just very joyful to do.”

It helps that the pair have almost the exact same vision for where Lennon Courtney will go next. “What’s interesting is quite often we’ll come to the table with a load of source material and references, and out of the billions and trillions of images available, myself and Brandon will often have the same images; we get buzzed by the same stuff,” Sonya laughs.

Inspiration comes from everywhere, Sonya says, which helps keep their offering fresh and exciting. “Like, not to be silly about it, but it could be a movie. It could be a book. It could be anything. I think one of the things that neither of us are particularly keen on is formulaic trend watching or trend forecasting. We’ve always kind of avoided that and said, let’s just do our own thing. Let’s just do what feels right.”

The brand mainly specialises in clothing for women, but as they have developed over the years, so too has their offerings. These days you can shop for women’s clothing but also accessories for anyone, and eclectic homeware for all.

“One of the points of pride for me is both my son and my daughter wear the accessories, they wear the hats and scarves, they love the homewares, and so that’s kind of great fun to see that unfold into new markets,” she says. Sonya is mother to twins Evie and Finn, who are turning 19 this year.

“I think we always felt we had a lot of people who loved us, loved what we stood for, loved what we did, but were probably never going to wear the clothes for one reason or another. Now they can have a piece of the brand in their home.”

Of course, the market has taken on some evolutions of its own, with plenty of Irish talents coming to the fore. “It’s so exciting to see all boats rise — and it’s really tricky. It’s very, very difficult to get a solid foothold in the fashion market in a way that is meaningful. There are some wonderful younger designers coming up and we need all of them, because we’re this incredible tiny little country that has such a richness of talent in all different sectors. I think that the challenge then is taking that offering on to a global stage, which takes a lot of investment and it takes a lot of skill,” Sonya says.

• The Ostara range, pictured here, is available now in store and online at Kilkenny Design.