One of the questions I get asked the most is where can I shop for sustainable clothes?! With this in mind this week I talk to Gráinne Wynne owner of Beautiful South, a boutique in Rathmines, Dublin Ireland which stocks ethically sourced fashion from European & indigenous Irish brands. Gráinne set up her boutique in 2018 after rearing her family & deciding to go back to work. With a background in hospitality but a life long  appreciation of design, Gráinne decided to follow her love of fashion and set up shop. While planning her business she watched the life-changing documentary, the true cost of fashion & decided that she didn’t want her store to contribute any further  to the exploitation of garment workers or fabric pollution. With this in mind she set about researching home grown labels making in Ireland using local fabrics as well as European sustainable bands.  In this episode we talk about cultivating a less is more approach to shopping, buying quality over quantity & how a capsule wardrobe doesn’t have to be all beige & how important it is to celebrate your uniqueness with unique crafted pieces. We also discuss how Gráinne’s business survived the lockdowns during the pandemic by using old fashioned retail practices from days gone by such as Gráinne cycling to customers houses on her bike  with curated pieces when the shop was forced to close, to an appro service where clients could try on clothes at home before buying and running a deposit service where customers can pay off the price of a garment over 6 weeks interest free, making it more manageable to save for quality pieces. If you ever thought boutique shopping was beyond your pay-package , this episode will make you re-think the way you shop. Remind us to save up for good clothes made fairly, and understand the reason these clothes cost more is that the makers are being paid a fair wage & the fabrics come from mills where the weavers are being paid fairly, a point we often forget to think about when we get seduced by  fancy visual merchandising on the highstreet. 
You can find Beautiful South on Instagram @beautiful.south
website: www.beautifulsouth.ie
Address: The Swan Centre, 3d Castlewood Ave, Rathmines, Dublin, Ireland