Robbie Fidgeon Kavanagh , BA (2020), co-founder of Dublin streetwear brand Emporium, shares his day where he balances store life, reaches for global production, and builds a cultural hub for Irish streetwear Most days I’m in the Emporium store on Drury Street. I’m not a morning person so, for me, that’s waking up as close as possible to when I need to leave the house. It’s a small team working on Emporium. Charlie Proctor- Quigley and I started the brand in 2018 while I was in second year in Trinity. We work collaboratively but I look a er more of the business end of things like production, timelines, marketing, and brand awareness. Charlie looks a er design. He produces the graphics, designs collections, or figures out what colours are going to be in for forthcoming seasons, all that kind of thing. A morning in the store will typically involve assisting customers and welcoming people into the space. It’s great to meet the people who are regularly supporting the brand and new people who are coming in to see it for the first time. Getting feedback directly from customers is so valuable. A lot of our friends will come by for lunch. People like to hang out here, which is fantastic and really what we wanted the space to be. The idea is to keep a small business mentality. When I was studying Sociology in Trinity, I started to think more about what brands really mean to people. What is the meaning of a streetwear brand? What does it do? What’s its role supposed to be in society? I wanted to do something like that, I wanted to have a cultural impact. What’s important for a streetwear brand is what they represent. All of these big brands, like Supreme in New York, have evolved from being small brands that represented the cities that they were growing in. You’re supposed to be a representative of the culture as a streetwear brand. We started out with pop-up events but now we have a permanent space to do that out of. We can host events and do more meaningful things. My a ernoons tend to be filled with lots of calls and emails. I’m mostly working on collaborations with di erent brands, and getting our stock produced, getting everything made and delivered on time ideally. As well as our store on Drury Street, we run pop-up events, and we’re stocked in places like Brown Thomas and showrooms in Japan. The Japanese market is very di erent to the Irish market. Even down to the types of garments they want, they love long sleeve T-shirts significantly more than the Irish; or from a sizing perspective, they buy more XLs than they do smalls. The style over there is to have everything fit baggy and oversized. Year-round, we’re planning where we’re going next. We’re hoping to do a pop-up in London this year and continue to grow our presence in Japan. Our first footwear collection came out this year and our first international collaboration with a UK brand, Hawkwood. In the evenings, I’m usually catching up on all the stu I was supposed to do during the day: throwing a wash on, attempting to make some dinner, and also just sitting around chatting. I’m not a super routine person at this point in my life. Outside of work, I play basketball for Trinity’s club team. When you’re playing sport and you’re taking something like a basketball game really seriously, it makes it a lot easier to forget about the other pressures happening in your life. I care so much about scoring the next basket in a game, and if you can put that on a level of importance, it helps you to let go of the other important things happening and unwind. The business used to be my hobby. I would go from working my full-time job to working on the brand and other freelance pieces. It’s strange now to have more time to myself again. I try to take breaks and switch o but it’s di icult to pull yourself away from something you’re so invested in. Having a small business can be a lot of pressure but it’s all worth it. The first time you see someone wearing your T-shirt in the wild, who doesn’t know you, you almost want to stop them on the street and say, ‘hey we made that!’. It still hasn’t lost its charm.
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