Marianne Weidner opens 4th Oska Shop at Avoca Mount Usher
Tuesday 18 March 2014
Passion and change are the two words that drive Marianne Weidner. Marianne has recently opened her fourth OSKA shop, this one at Mount Usher Gardens in Ashford,Co Wicklow.
OSKA is a German clothing range whose concept is 'fashionable comfortable dressing for the women we really are'. It is designed and constructed with a slightly funky, sometimes Japanese edge, using good quality fabrics from beautiful linens to fine wools, cashmere and silk jersey.
The range is classy and definitely 'destination dressing' as OSKA aficionados will drive from one end of the country to the other to make their seasonal purchases of these wonderfully forgiving clothes.
Some two and a half years ago, I interviewed Marianne and her husband Jud at their first OSKA outlet shop in Toormore in West Cork. Since then they have moved steadily across the south, opening an OSKA retail shop in Douglas Village in Cork, an outlet shop at Killeagh near Youghal, and now what Marianne describes as the "jewel in their crown" in the courtyard of Mount Usher Gardens alongside Avoca .
Marianne Murphy grew up in the fashion business in Bantry where her father had a shoe shop, so, along with her siblings, she was hands-on, helping out in the shop from an early age. In 1977 she opened a 'fashion shop' with her brother John, which was such a success that it expanded to Cork in 1980 and to Anne Street in Dublin in 1981, now with their sister Margo on board. In fact, 'Monica John' was a hot destination in the Eighties and Nineties, stocking upmarket labels such as Georges Rech, Ischiko and Annette Gortz.
Marianne met Jud when he came from England on family holidays to Bantry – his mother being Irish. The young pair got married as soon as he finished college.
Some 14 years ago, Marianne went to the Pure Exhibition in London sourcing new labels for Monica John. Here she found Helmut Bayer who was on the first day of showing his OSKA range. It was to be a fortuitous meeting indeed.
"I remember going through the pieces and thinking I could see every customer we had wearing that collection. When the samples arrived in Ireland, it was like sunshine coming out of the boxes."
Marianne, Margo and John worked successfully together for over 25 years. However, a family tragedy brought change to them all. "In 2005 our youngest brother Finbar, aged 45, took his own life and that rattled us all. Margo decided to leave the business to concentrate on her family. We all took a step back and looked at our lives and I left Monica John," she says.
Helmut Bayer, meantime, had been asking Marianne to work for him. She took up the post and is now director of wholesale for the UK and Ireland, living in London for three months of the year, selling to shops all over the world including New York, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
However, being a retailer at heart, Marianne still wanted her own shop. "In 2008 I discovered a great premises in Toormore near Goleen in West Cork. I thought about all our extra OSKA past season stock and samples, discussed it with Helmut and so OSKA Outlet Store at Toormore was born."
In 2011, they opened an OSKA retail shop in East Douglas Village. "It is the most similar to OSKA-type shops in the UK and New York."
They took the outlet concept then to East Cork between Youghal and Killeagh and have now worked their way up along the coast to Mount Usher, which is just the perfect location f or destination shopping from Dublin.
"The Mount Usher shop for me is the ultimate experience for women. This is the change that I like to see," says Marianne.
As to the customer's buying pattern nowadays, Jud says people really look for quality, they look for investment pieces. "Things have changed, there is optimism and hope now. They have worn their clothes and are buying again."
The great thing about OSKA is that you can buy something one year and add to it the following year with pieces that will complement what you already have.
And Marianne tells me that different nationalities favour different design themes and colours.
"The difference in colour in particular is huge. The Italians reflect their personalities in their colours such as taupes, yellows, ochres. We want blues, pinks, purples. Nobody wants black – yet they all buy black! They come in looking for colour and end up in black.
"As to style, the English play it safer than Irish customers, they go for the narrower silhouette, narrower trousers. Irish customers are more adventurous and will wear the funkier looks."
www.oska-ireland.com