Sonya Lennon

Oh, yeah, I have still have notebooks full of my fashion creations from probably about the age of 10.

Horrendous now, absolutely horrendous, but they still exist.

Well, they were kind of sexy aliens.

So, yeah, so just, and I used to get fizzy watching fashion television and seeing international catwalks and kind of always felt that was the direction of travel.

And what did the family think of this as an option for you growing up?

Well, my mom was a transatlantic cabin crew for Aer Lingus.

So she had very international references, cultural references.

So she was I mean, she loved shopping in New York back in the day.

And yeah, so so we had like we had a lot of stuff before other people like I was the first kid I knew who had leg warmers.

And the halo effect of that to my wider group was kind of amazing.

So I got to sense what it felt like to feel good about how you look and how it positively impacts those around you.

So when you said you wanted to work in this area.

Yeah, they said no.

They were like, oh, well, we don't know if you can make a career at that.

But I pursued.

Would you look at the civil service maybe?

Well, it wasn't quite that, but they definitely had dreams of me going to university because neither of them had.

And then circumstances went against me.

I applied for fashion in NCAD.

I had a couple of insurance policy arts courses on there as well.