Peter O’Brien

Peter O’Brien is a fashion and costume designer for film and theatre, a lecturer in film design at IADT, and a two-time winner of the Irish Times Theatre Awards. Peter moved to London and worked on a display at Marshall & Snellgrove (now Debenhams). On the advice of British fashion editor Eve Pollard, to whom he had shown some sketches, he applied to Saint Martin’s School of Art and was accepted on a foundation course. After completing a three-year degree course in Fashion Design, he graduated with first-class honours. Peter then completed a postgraduate course at Parsons School of Design in New York. Upon graduating, Peter moved to Paris, where he worked at Christian Dior under Marc Bohan, at Givenchy, and as a senior designer at Chloé. In 1989, he was appointed creative director at Rochas, where he remained for 12 years, designing women’s wear and accessories and overseeing menswear, perfumes and licenses. Peter returned to Ireland in 2004, where he has since been working as a freelance designer. He created collections first for retailers AWear and now an exclusive capsule collection for Arnotts department store. In 2005, Peter started designing theatre, utilising his skills in the ateliers of Paris and calling on the services of a unique range of craftspeople and suppliers from his years abroad. To date, he has designed costumes for numerous plays at Dublin’s Gate Theatre, including Lady Wyndemere’s Fan, The Constant Wife, Private Lives, and Present Laughter. He has also designed costumes for Pygmalion at The Abbey Théâtre, Dublin. In 2012, fine art printers and book publishers Stoney Road Press launched a limited-edition, hand-printed book of O’Brien’s theatre and fashion drawings spanning 30 years, titled ‘Workbook’. In 2013, he was a costume designer in the film ‘The Price of Desire‘ (dir: Mary McGuckian), based on the life of furniture designer and architect Eileen Gray.