{"id":547507,"date":"2026-07-13T14:07:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T14:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/547507\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T14:07:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T14:07:14","slug":"amy-huberman-was-a-fan-of-her-first-brand-now-this-irish-designer-is-going-bolder-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/547507\/","title":{"rendered":"Amy Huberman was a fan of her first brand. Now this Irish designer is going bolder \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raunchy, sexy, powerful and Irish \u2013 that\u2019s the core of a new fashion brand called Mn\u00e1 from Manchester-based Sarah Plunkett, the Irish co-founder and former brand director of Queens of Archive, the vintage-inspired occasionwear brand launched in 2020 that quickly became one of the UK\u2019s most recognised womenswear brands. <\/p>\n

Despite Queens of Archive\u2019s success, with a pop-up in Arnotts the following year and fans that included actress Amy Huberman and presenter Laura Whitmore, Plunkett wanted to produce something that resonated more with her own personal style and Irish heritage, hence the idea of Mn\u00e1. She calls it \u201crefined and rebellious\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am 47 and I wanted to appeal to my age group who are sexy, cool and a bit rock \u2018n roll. We are supposed to be put in a drawer and not come out [at this age], so I have injected more sex appeal in this new collection,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s for a woman who is fierce and powerful and whose style transcends trends,\u201d she adds, pointing out 1980s-inspired design details like shoulder pads, and 1970s disco dresses. Pieces are named after Irish women including her own grand mother Tessie, Dolores O\u2019Riordan, Grace O\u2019Malley and Imelda May.<\/p>\n

Fabrics include snakeskin, tiger print, black satin, black and gold leopard print and black velvet. The Erin snakeskin skirt and jacket drew from David Lynch\u2019s black comedy Wild at Heart, the 1990s movie featuring Nicolas Cage as Sailor Ripley, and the snakeskin jacket worn on his release from prison. The skirt can be styled with long black gloves, boots and top.Peg – the long, black and gold metallic leopard print dress – is designed to be either buttoned up or unbuttoned, while the Tessie trio of mini, midi skirt and boulder-shoulder jacket come in a Japanese black liquid satin that in photographs looks like leather. Kitty is a tiger-print dress and top, while Imelda comes in black velvet with a gold trim. There\u2019s a homage to Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor and her famous song Troy, \u201cwhich meant a lot to me\u201d says Plunkett. The lyrics from that song \u201cI will rise, I will return\u201d feature on a black top. Other T-shirts are emblazoned with words like \u2018Mn\u00e1\u2019 and \u2018It\u2019s Herself\u2019. <\/p>\n

\u201cI design the whole thing from start to finish, so it begins and ends with me,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat keeps me going is the reaction on social media. When we launched on Instagram, we got 150,000 views and Imelda May reposted, so there is a lot of interest already.\u201d Everything is fully lined, tailored, and shoulders are often padded for structure. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe brand is very personal \u2013 it\u2019s me and informed by my Irish roots, my experiences working in fashion and my reimagined vintage-inspired silhouettes for the modern woman,” she says, adding that \u201cconsumers are increasingly seeking authenticity, craftsmanship and emotional connection from the brands they choose to wear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mná'sMn\u00e1’s Erin snakeskin jacket (\u20ac457). Photograph: Eimear Lynch \"Mná'sMn\u00e1’s Roisin mini dress, \u20ac425. Photograph: Eimear Lynch \"MnáMn\u00e1 T-Shirt, \u20ac54. Photograph: Eimear Lynch \"MnáMn\u00e1 T-shirt, \u20ac54. Photograph: Eimear Lynch <\/p>\n

Plunkett is from Tallaght, Dublin. After leaving Our Lady\u2019s School in Terenure, she went travelling. Her mother worked in fashion retail, \u201cbut I preferred the creative side, so I became a window dresser in Arnotts \u2013 now called visual merchandising and taught in technical colleges\u201d.<\/p>\n

She later moved to London, where she built a career in visual merchandising, becoming head of visual merchandising for AllSaints in east London, with responsibility for the UK and EU. \u201cIt was interesting to adapt to different customers\u2019 tastes, so I learnt a lot and, working with a team, opened a number of stores for them in the US,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She later spent a year heading up visual merchandising for Value Retail at Bicester Village in Oxfordshire, before leaving to set up Queens of Archive.<\/p>\n

She is married to a Mancunian working in computer security. The pair bonded over a shared love of music and love of the city. Her ultimate ambition is to move back home to Ireland. <\/p>\n

Mn\u00e1 will launch across two \u201ccarefully curated\u201d drops – the first is on August 1st, with the second following in mid-August. Prices start from \u20ac54 for T-shirts up to \u20ac467 for jackets. the-mna.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Location photography in Dublin by Eimear Lynch; model: Tinna Bergs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raunchy, sexy, powerful and Irish \u2013 that\u2019s the core of a new fashion brand called Mn\u00e1 from Manchester-based…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[232053,93,631,61,60,709],"class_list":["post-547507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-amy-huberman","tag-entertainment","tag-for-you","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}