Talamh Buan

From Carrickmacross to Paris Haute Couture
An exhibition of couture by Standing Ground

On 6 July 2026, the Irish fashion atelier Standing Ground, founded by Irish designer Michael Stewart, presented its first couture collection at the Embassy of Ireland in Paris, including a gown created entirely in hand-worked Carrickmacross lace, made with commissioned artisans in County Monaghan.

This exhibition brings that gown, together with a corseted dress whose bustier was embroidered by the Paris atelier Maison Vermont, to the National Museum of Ireland as part of Irish Design Week 2026.

A story of fashion, craftsmanship and cultural legacy.

What is this Exhibition?

This exhibition presents two dresses from the first couture collection of Standing Ground, the atelier of Irish designer Michael Stewart, one of the most significant new voices in contemporary fashion. It tells the story of the designer and makers who brought the dresses to life.

Together, they show how traditional Irish and French making skills can be transformed through contemporary design, and how heritage crafts can evolve, remain relevant, and inspire future generations.

About Standing Ground

Standing Ground is the fashion atelier of designer Michael Stewart. Established in 2022, Standing Ground has quickly gained international recognition for its sculptural silhouettes, innovative material exploration, and commitment to craftsmanship. It works with the specificity of the body through draping, sculpting, and crafting. Attending to proportion, silhouette, tailoring and ornamentation, the atelier contemporises haute couture methods and reinterprets the formal codes of evening wear. The ancient landscape of Ireland, including its Neolithic standing stones, provided early inspiration for a brand that has since distinguished itself for sculptural designs that achieve an elemental purity of form.

Standing Ground was awarded the inaugural LVMH Savoir-Faire Prize in 2024. Michael Stewart was previously recognised through DCCI’s Future Makers Awards as Emerging Maker Winner.

For its first couture collection, presented at the Embassy of Ireland in Paris on 6 July 2026, Standing Ground brought this design language into a new realm of technical and material refinement. Nearly two years in the making, the collection was developed with leading specialists, including embroiderers, lacemakers, and the master corsetier Mr. Pearl. Rooted in the disciplines of handmade dressmaking, it articulated a vision of couture defined by liquid silhouettes, graceful tailoring, and immaculate corsetry.

Cén Fáth Freastal?

Heritage Decode to Recode

This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter Irish heritage craft, French haute couture techniques, and contemporary fashion in conversation.

Visitors will:

• See the Carrickmacross lace dress, first presented in Paris.
• See the corseted dress with a bustier embroidered by the French haute couture atelier Maison Vermont.
• Discover how traditional Irish craft techniques are reimagined through couture.
• Explore the journey from lace workshop to Paris presentation.
• Gain insight into the future of Irish fashion and craft.

Exhibition Experience

Through garments, documentation, imagery and process materials, visitors can follow the journey from the first stitch to the final presentation in Paris, discovering the collaboration between designer, artisan and maker that transformed Irish heritage craft into contemporary couture.

The Carrickmacross Lace Dress

Rooted in Monaghan since the early nineteenth century, Carrickmacross lace is one of Ireland’s most important textile traditions. For generations, its creation relied upon the skill and labour of local lacemakers, many of whom remained largely unrecognised despite the extraordinary expertise the craft requires.

The entire lace design for this couture dress was hand-drawn by Michael Stewart. Each individual motif was developed in relation to every other, forming a unified artwork shaped by the body. The intricate design comprises botanical and natural elements such as brambles, thorns, blackberries and dragonflies.
The drawing was translated entirely by hand into Carrickmacross lace by commissioned artisans in County Monaghan. Requiring 4,300 hours to complete, the lace demonstrates extraordinary technical precision.

Using guipure construction, motifs are joined by delicate threads, bars or plaits, without a tulle background, creating an open, sculptural effect. Traditional techniques, including buttonhole and eyelet stitching, raised seed stitches, pheasant’s eye, honeycomb, cobweb and spider’s eye, combine with other characteristic decorative elements, including shamrocks, loops and pops, to create a richly textured surface. In a further innovation, lace appliqué is constructed directly over the seams, so that the lace is both ornamental and structural.
The dress brings together Standing Ground’s couture vision with a lace-making tradition more than 200 years old. It embodies a collaboration between designer and maker, uniting artistic imagination, technical knowledge and the enduring identity of place.

The Maison Vermont Dress

Standing Ground’s 2024 LVMH Savoir-Faire Prize, awarded with the support of Delphine Arnault, Chairman and CEO of Christian Dior Couture and Founder of the LVMH Prize, gave the atelier the opportunity to collaborate with the French haute couture embroidery atelier Maison Vermont.

Involving more than 500 hours of work, the collaboration saw Maison Vermont embroider the bustier of a corseted dress designed by Standing Ground, with a draped silk-velvet skirt. The corset is densely embellished with hand-applied beads, crystal beads and synthetic black opals, arranged in undulating formations that trace and accentuate the contours of the body.

The embroidery relies on vermicelli beadwork (vermicelle de perles), an advanced haute couture savoir-faire worked with a Lunéville hook. Each tiny bead is applied individually and packed closely in overlapping, free-flowing layers resembling loose stippling, creating a densely textured surface with a signature ‘caviar’ effect. The result evokes both celestial phenomena, from streams of stardust to comet trails, and the articulated surface of crocodilian armour.

The piece exemplifies Standing Ground’s dialogue between the organic and the constructed: couture craftsmanship transforms the surface of the body into something simultaneously earthly and otherworldly.