How it all started

The path to getting peoples clothes altered here in Wexford started a long time ago.  I was born and grew up in the city of Kielce in central Poland and in many ways Dressmaking always felt like the obvious career path for me. I was just 15 when I began my training in the trade, following in the footsteps of my grandmother, who worked as a dressmaker during the second World War. She used to arrange to have peoples clothes altered at home and she used to make the clothes for my dolls. People back then were really into sewing and knitting and it was considered a vital trade. They had to learn because they needed to make their own clothes. I was really impressed by my grandmother’s knitting and sewing skills, so she was certainly the main influence on me choosing this career path. After completing my initial training in dressmaking, I continued studying the trade at a higher level while also working full time in a factory building up knowledge and experience. In 2007 I moved from Poland to Ireland in search of new opportunities and I quickly settled, in spite of the unpredictable weather. I worked in Furlong’s Family Butchers where I had a great experience and learned so much about the food industry and customer service. I then noticed that there were more sewing studios opening up and I changed job to work as a dressmaker/seamstress in a local sewing studio. I never thought I would go back to sewing because there were not many places you could work in that trade here. In Poland there are lots of factories where they make clothes but in Wexford there wasn’t much. I thought, why not? and eventually decided to set up my own sewing studio right here in Wexford town. My husband Dane is an Irish speaker so that’s where the name Gúnadóir came from – it means dressmaker in Irish. We had planned to open in 2019 but we never quite got round to it, ultimately we opened our doors in mid February 2020, a few weeks before the first covid 19 lockdown. We had been slowly but surely building up our customer base and we had been working hard promoting ourselves and then covid hits us with a huge sucker punch. We turned our attention to making facemasks during the first lockdown and they were of a very high standard – comfortable, cotton fabric that came in a wide variety of colours. We supplied local nursing homes and regular customers and that proved to be vital in terms of keeping a little bit of money coming in. I am grateful to have a job that draws on my skills as a dressmaker. I was pleasently surprised in a way, that so many people wanted alterations. I know it’s not always cheap but it’s nice to see it’s not just about buying new clothes all the time as that may not be environmentally sustainable. As the restrictions were lifted last year we got busier as more and more people saught to have their clothes altered in Wexford and we recieved lots of enquiries and requests and that has been a huge relief to us, we have regular customers and new customers all the time and we are certainly looking forward to opening our doors again once the restrictions allow us to.