Home | Lifestyle & Travel | A Breath Of Fresh Air: Discover Amanda Pratt’s New Shopping Destination, Amo & Pax
Lifestyle & Travel
Amanda Pratt has opened an exciting new creative venture in Avoca’s original HQ and we are hosting an exclusive event for readers of THE GLOSS on Sunday May 19 …
Amo & Pax has opened in Kilmacanogue in the one-time head office of Avoca, now redesigned and reshaped by Amanda Pratt, its creative director for more than 20 years. Amanda has stripped out the labyrinth of offices to create a large, new light-filled store stocked with individual products and fresh ideas, a space for creativity and collaboration, called Amo & Pax. “The concept stems from an appreciation of good design and a respect for artisan skills. I think it’s important we all now look at a different sort of retail experience, one that reflects a more conscious form of selling and buying.”
Customers will enjoy the kind of unique and covetable items they have come to expect from the former creative engine at Avoca, but this project is about much more besides. There is a wellbeing, exhibition and event space, but with no strict formula attached. Elaine Harris, author, yoga and meditation practitioner, is running programmes there to begin with, and Amanda is looking to forward to nurturing events and happenings around art, creativity and self development, “We’re inspired by initiatives like London’s The School of Life. Our ambition is to offer people with ideas a place to engage and be inspired.”
The making has started. Amanda has been working with potter Geoffrey Healy to handmake a small ceramics range. There will also be an expert tailor on site to upcycle, restore and repurpose pieces that already exist, making them useful and beautiful again. “It’s about encouraging self-expression so that clothes are not wasted or thrown away, but have personal meaning, and that can last forever,” says Amanda. “We will use ends of fabric rolls, embroidered patches and discarded vintage material.”
When did this idea begin? “After we sold Avoca, I was thinking about how we have so little independent Irish retail. International chains and fast fashion dominate. So I decided I wanted to do something with meaning, somewhere with a more conscious, sustainable, local perspective.”
However, her roots in Kilmacanogue were so strong they drew her back to her old stomping ground. “My mum and dad, Hilary and Donald Pratt, built here in 1979 for weaving and clothes-making. It was a half-way house between the handweaving mill at Avoca village and our home in Dublin. Andrzej Wejchert designed it and we had a small shop and a café upstairs. Avoca grew to be a lot more than that, but this was the core of the operation for a long time. My first days in the company were here, designing knitwear among the yarn bays. I had done a post-grad at the London College of Fashion and I couldn’t believe my luck that my parents trusted me to come back home and begin designing.”
Amanda wanted to get back to working in a place surrounded by nature. “There’s an ancient Yew here, over 1,000 years old, where I’ve always felt a particular energy. It feels really good to be back among the trees again.” The newly refurbished, stylish two-storey Amo & Pax structure itself explains some of the designer’s strongly held views about art and architecture, marrying old and new. A gently curved wall of reclaimed bricks encloses the exterior space and salvaged farm gates were sourced for the entrance. Inside, Amanda experimented with old techniques for the wall and floor finishes. “As William Morris believed – to apply art to useful wares – is at the heart of how I work. Why not create something useful that is also joyful, beautiful?” Her inspiration comes from nature, art, history and from Italy. At home, her studio is filled with pottery, designs and paintings she has created, along with shelves of identical scrapbooks filled with drawings, cuttings, fabric swatches, paint colours, images and copious notes. For all its glorious randomness, this collection is hyper-organised, the mix curated to a T. “I’m unashamedly analogue. I like to sample and make with my hands, cutting, glueing, sewing.”
It is this attention to detail that makes life interesting, says Amanda. After Avoca, and then creating beautiful retail spaces for clients including the Duke of Buccleuch at Dalkeith Palace, near Edinburgh and Russborough House, Amanda welcomes the opportunity to be able to once again design for herself, and to have complete autonomy over the direction and vision. “You have to have something new to contribute, otherwise you’re just adding to the noise. I am being very disciplined about Amo & Pax, only stocking things that bring me and hopefully others joy, that make me smile or make me think. This is very freeing!” She is working with lots of Irish makers – trusted jewellers, potters, pattern-makers, printers, graphic designers – as well as with knitwear companies, embroiderers and weavers in Europe.
“As far back as I can remember, I loved to make things. The sheer delight of turning something into another thing. I painted, knitted, dyed and adjusted clothes, made my own jumpers. Embroidered pillowcases. Patched things. While students at Trinity, my friend and I bought our clothes in secondhand shops, which probably wasn’t very cool back then. But it was about expressing individuality.”
Amo & Pax has sustainability at its heart, both in the bricks and mortar and in what’s on offer for customers, its new community. “I set out to do this project as consciously as possible. We’ve put solar on the roof, trawled salvage yards and auction rooms for gates, doors, furniture and fittings. We’re getting the highest BER you can on a secondhand building. We will stock products in a sustainable way, minimising waste, doing the best we can. “It’s important this is more than simply a shop, hopefully a gorgeous, inviting one, of course, but that it becomes a nurturing space for wellbeing, for positivity, celebrating creativity and making, and in some way, renewing the human spirit.”
We are hosting an exclusive event for readers of THE GLOSS on Sunday May 19. Join us at Amo & Pax for a special morning with Diarmuid Gavin to learn how to create a garden filled with flowers and colour all summer long. Meet the garden designer, celebrate creativity in this beautiful space, and browse Amo & Pax’s unique edit of fashion, accessories, jewellery, gifts, books, stationery and interiors, chosen with creativity and sustainability in mind. To book tickets, visit www.thegloss.ie/amoandpaxgarden.
Photography by Kieran Harnett.
Amo & Pax, Kilmacanogue, Co Wicklow (open Wednesday-Sunday, 10am-5pm); www.amoandpax.com.