Picture book critiquing fragrance industry among projects by the National College of Art and Design
An illustrated book that explores the fragrance industry through a decolonisation lens is among the projects by the National College of Art and Design.
Also featured is a fashion line combining restrictive Victorian clothing with life-saving equipment and a jewellery collection informed by defence mechanisms found in the animal kingdom.
National College of Art and Design
School: School of Design
Courses: BA Fashion, BA Graphic Design, BA Illustration, BA Jewellery and Objects, BA Moving Image Design, BA Product Design, BA Textile and Surface Design, MA Interaction Design and MSc Medical Device Design
School statement:
“Design is a cultural, social, political, economic and relational activity that responds creatively to its context, location in time, connections and people.
“At the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) we seek to nurture, empower and enable our students to become agents of change. The diverse range of work showcased here demonstrates how our graduates are co-creating, co-realising and co-communicating tangible design solutions and opportunities.
“The award-winning School of Design at NCAD offers the most comprehensive range of design education on the island of Ireland. This dynamic environment creates a research-led studio culture that thrives on new ideas, ways of doing things and new areas of expertise.
“The calibre of our undergraduate and postgraduate students continues to be globally recognised, with the college ranked 53rd in the world in art and design in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026.
“We are extremely proud of this year’s graduating students who demonstrate NCAD’s belief in the vital contribution that creative practice makes to our society as a force that creates space for care, reflection, innovation and new thinking, all of which are essential to a cohesive and dynamic society and economy.”
Reachra by Daniel Fahy
“Reachra is a high-end, gothic womenswear collection retelling the tragedy of the RMS Tayleur (1854). Over 200 women perished, largely due to the extreme fashion of the Victorian era.
“The collection follows the only three female survivors in a haunting revenge against the fashion that almost killed them. Victorian corsets and heavy petticoats meet modern life-saving equipment, depicting the life-and-death balance of fashion.
“These dark stories are retold in black damasks, ghostly whites, macramé, prints, fringes and hardware. Reachra addresses the future of fashioning the post-human body and my wish to design a better fate for the women who perished.”
Student: Daniel Fahy
Course: BA Fashion
Email: danieljamfahy[at]gmail.com
Access Denied | Beyond Borders by Kristine Lauron
“What defines citizenship? Its meanings are ever-changing, though they have strayed from its essence of providing care. Rather, citizenship has evolved into a system that protects borders instead of people.
“This project examines citizenship as an area that can extend care beyond borders through typography, sculpture and printed matter.
“Access Denied highlights the obstacles in accessing care from the state and society. Emulating the immigration checkpoint, it shows that questioning and intimidation exist beyond the airport.
“In transforming empathy into action, Beyond Borders adopts a grassroots approach to make citizenship more inclusive and accessible by creating grounds for conversation, not enemies.”
Student: Kristine Lauron
Course: BA Graphic Design
Email: hello[at]kristinelauron.com
Simulated Storytelling by Nathan Costello
“In rural Ireland, emigration and the slow creep of mass culture are wearing down the localised stories that hold places together.
“Simulated Storytelling is a social robot inspired by the seanchaí, developed in conversation with communities on the Dingle Peninsula. It has an expressive face and an Irish accent, and tells only real stories gathered from real people.
“The work is less a product than a question made physical: how do you design a presence you actually want to hear a story from?
“It listens too, drawing in newer voices, holding a thread between generations before it thins to nothing.”
Student: Nathan Costello
Course: BA Interaction Design
Email: nathancosx2[at]gmail.com
Go Faster, Bite Better by Kate Murphy
“Go Faster, Bite Better is a jewellery collection inspired by natural protective armour in animals, such as the claws of a badger, the horns of an antelope and the shell of a beetle.
“The work translates these defence mechanisms, both forms and behaviours, to inform and inspire the collection. Aesthetically, the work appears sleek yet harsh: a wearable statement.
“The work highlights our biological need to protect ourselves from perceived danger, whether that danger is embarrassment, vulnerability or exposure.
“By reimagining these organic forms, the pieces become symbolic extensions of the body, representing strength, resilience and control.”
Student: Kate Murphy
Course: BA Jewellery and Objects
Email: k8murphy.design[at]gmail.com
Liberty by Chiara Spassov-Marquardt
“Liberty showcases the significance of the small. This animated short film depicts real-life Dubliners, inspired by the people I have connected with in the Liberties. Their stories are reimagined into fiction.
“The film follows characters connected by grief, living side by side yet isolated. The mundane monotony of a workday is accompanied by a quiet tragedy, invisible to the passerby yet all-consuming in their internal lives.
“With no dialogue, the story is told exclusively through visuals. This work focuses on the complicated emotions that arise when you grieve someone and the duty often felt to never let go of them.”
Student: Chiara Spassov-Marquardt
Course: BA Moving Image Design
Email: chiaraspassovmarquardt[at]gmail.com
WayPoint by Xiao Yin Redmond
“Storm Éowyn left up to 1.25 million customers in Ireland with little to no mobile or broadband coverage for up to two weeks. This left many people struggling to access information, coordinate debris-clearing efforts and care for vulnerable neighbours.
“In response, I designed WayPoint, a communication support device and power bank for use during widespread outages. It is aimed at rural households where formal support is limited.
“By allowing users to send short messages without relying on centralised infrastructure, WayPoint enables information sharing, mutual care and community-led action.
“WayPoint explores climate resilience through the lens of emotional and community resilience.”
Student: Xiao Yin Redmond
Course: BA Product Design
Email: xiaoyinredmond[at]gmail.com
Renewal in Ruin by Dan Casey
“Renewal in Ruin explores the heritage and cultural memory silently archived within derelict sites and buildings. This collection challenges the notion of deterioration as loss, instead viewing it as a process that reveals a hidden ancestry through texture and colour.
“The core of this collection is an immersive world shaped by decay, memory and preservation, where each textile contributes to a wider narrative.
“Using long-lasting and natural fabrics like leathers and linens, combined with handcrafted and traditional techniques, the work creates fabrics that change over time, ageing in tandem with lived experience, just as our built environment ages with us.”
Student: Dan Casey
Course: BA Textile and Surface Design
Email: dancaseytextiles[at]gmail.com
Varithena – Venturi by Sims Kelly
“In partnership with Boston Scientific, our class was given a speculative design brief for Varithena, a polidocanol injectable foam for varicose vein treatment, to reimagine the user experience with planetary impact in mind.
“Within our current consumption model lies a critical opportunity: to innovate rather than incinerate.
“Through this redesign, Varithena was reduced from 11 components to five. Oxygen alloy canisters used to propel and mix the polidocanol foam are now returned and reprocessed.
“Body housings are injection-moulded from recycled HDPE as mirrored interlocking parts. The foam digester eliminates the need for multi-layer mesh through the Venturi effect and microfluidics.”
Student: Sims Kelly
Course: MSc Medical Device Design
Email: andrew[at]simskelly.com
Rethinking Digital Identity by Leah Downing
“Paul Ricoeur distinguished between two kinds of identity: idem, the sameness that persists across time and ipse, the selfhood that is lived, narrative and always becoming.
“Identification systems are built on idem logic, but people live ipse lives, and the gap between the two is where this project begins. Ireland is building a national digital identity system right now.
“The project asks whether digital identity infrastructure can be designed on a different logic, one where the system is made legible to the person rather than the person made legible to the system. Identity infrastructure should not feel like a trial.”
Student: Leah Downing
Course: MA Interaction Design
Email: leahvdowning[at]gmail.com
Under Your Nose – A History of Fragrance From the Very Beginning of Time by Czacarri Muli
“A picture book about the fragrance industry. Scent is a powerfully evocative tool that can capture beauty, but is also capable of unseen division.
“Interested in acts of archiving and who archives them, I disseminate rich narratives to children. I explore how the fragrance industry has historically shaped the idea of the other.
“The modern Western industry has invisibly dominated the world through dictating what we smell. I illustrate hidden histories and tell an alternative story of fragrance, making the viewer an active participant in decolonisation.
“Pastels, washes and paint contextualise a gated industry, where I make the intangible, tangible.”
Student: Czacarri Muli
Course: BA Illustration
Email: czacarrimuli[at]gmail.com
