Meet Taippe, the Irish designed, Portuguese crafted slow fashion brand collaborating with Pellador
One half of the capsule collection Taippellador, Taippe is a female-founded, female-designed brand committed to slow fashion, meticulous craftsmanship, and creating pieces made to last.
I’m Molly Walters, a 24-year-old Irish fashion designer who graduated from NCAD in 2023. After working in a fast fashion company for no less than three months, a dear friend of mine, Matilde, asked me if I was interested in helping her start a brand. I was struggling a bit with the ethics of what I was producing, so I was really excited by the opportunity.
We had made friends during our Erasmus year in Milan and kept in touch. She studied graphic design and had a stunning and distinctive style that I have always admired. Matilde has a lot of family working in the textile industry in Portugal and was a beacon of knowledge in an area I only knew the basics about. Her plan was to create a brand out of a vertical textile company, meaning we would develop products from fibre to garment and hopefully put Portuguese craftsmanship on the map. Quite soon, we got started on developing our first collection.
We are a female-founded, female-designed brand committed to slow and considered fashion. Using natural fibres and meticulous craftsmanship, Taippe creates pieces using the motto “made to last”. We are very proud of the fact that we are Irish-designed and hand-crafted in Portugal. In one year, we have launched four collections and our team has grown to three. We have welcomed Isabel, who works remotely from London, to help us with our marketing and social media strategy, as we are still a direct-to-consumer brand. We have recently been stocked in our first store in Lisbon, LX factory, and are hoping to find an Irish stockist next.
The ethos
I am very sentimental about clothing; I only really want to make things that will be cherished and live a long life. I like to use natural fibres because I just think our skin prefers them, and of course, they are kinder to the planet. I also love high-quality sewing, I am not a fan of an overlocked seam despite the convenience of them. With Taippe, we prefer to produce quality over quantity. It’s hard not to fall into producing multiple seasonal collections and churning out a lot of product, but we prefer a longer development process to get things right.
I have always wanted to make and study art, but studying fashion design seemed a bit scary to me when I was growing up. It took going to college to realise you don’t have to be a fashionista to make beautiful things. Learning about garment making and design became such a passion and an escape for me in college. During Covid, I made and sold corsets from my bedroom. Growing up, I thought I would have imposter syndrome studying fashion design, but now I know that there is room for everyone in fashion. I started out doing Painting in NCAD and luckily later got a place in fashion and never looked back.
So far, we stock tailored trousers, t-shirts, vests, jackets (trenches and bombers), skirts, dresses, and soon, socks! We tend to do themed capsule collections, like a tailoring-inspired collection and a 1960s collection. We try to keep things as unisex and gender neutral as possible, incorporating feminine elements to traditionally male clothing and vice versa.
We also develop the fabric for everything we make, all with natural and cellulose fibres. We only make enough fabric for the exact number of pieces, meaning they are limited edition capsules and avoid any waste.
Taippellador
We met Greg and Dewey from Pellador at a Men’s Paris Fashion Week in January 2025, in a showroom hosted by Impossible Objects. It was friendship at first sight and we discussed collaborating within ten minutes of meeting. We wanted to create a collection that blends Portuguese and Irish elements. They visited us in our factory in Guimaraes in northern Portugal just a few weeks after we met. We got to developing a collection right away. We were inspired a lot by Irish tweed and Limerick lace, and also Portuguese tiles and football memorabilia.
This collection celebrates friendship, creativity, and cultural storytelling, blending Pellador’s iconic football jumpers with Taippe’s signature tailored trousers and tanks. Taippellador is a fusion of Irish and Portuguese heritage. Inspired by Portugal’s classic 2007 football jerseys and traditional Irish tweed, the collection experiments with shape, colour, and pattern, balancing red and green tones with contemporary street style.
Though rooted in two distinct cultures, it reflects the ways in which craft, sport, and storytelling unite us across borders. From Portuguese tiles to Irish Celtic symbols, from football to folklore, we found echoes of each other in the details—a reminder that creativity and culture are universal languages.
Inspired by Portugal’s classic 2007 football jerseys and traditional Irish tweed, Taippellador experiments with shape, colour, and pattern, balancing red and green tones with contemporary street style.
The logistics
We started the brand working out of a linear textile company in northern Portugal. They wanted to invest in developing a few brands that could work in-house to widen their range and not only outsource their clientele. This was a very privileged and exciting starting out point, as it provided funding in the early stages of the brand. In recent months, we have bought Taippe from this company and have become independent from them to grow the brand further. It was incredible to work with so many people who had so much knowledge to share with us, and we adore everything we produced with them. We are now independently developing our collections and fabrics in a network of suppliers in northern Portugal, from knit jumpers and socks to tailored trousers and tees.
The most valuable business advice we have ever received is applying the 80/20 rule to your clothing brand: 20% of your designs will generate 80% of your profit. However, it’s crucial to understand that the remaining 80%—your new, less-profitable designs—are essential. They are the experiments that help you discover which products will become the next big sellers and eventually move into that high-profit 20% category. We are trying to implement this by bringing out a restockable collection of our most loved pieces while continuing to bring out small themed capsules.
Learning how to allocate and manage our budget has been a huge learning curve. Asking for help from people who know more than we do has also been so important to our learning. Matilde is reading all of the business books under the sun, which makes me very proud. She dedicates two days each month to finances and admin, which really keeps things organised.
The brands and designers to know
Sandy Liang, Shushu Tong, Simone Rocha and Miuccia Prada are my favourite designers. My favourite brands are Paloma Wool and Our Legacy. Of course, we are big Pellador fans. Robyn Lynch is also an incredibly skilled and creative designer. Niamh Saunders and Conor O’Brien are fellow NCAD graduates, hand-making beautiful garments too.
Investing in good quality fun socks is good for the soul and elevates any outfit, and this is far from a new item, but I am very pro the Havaianas trend at the moment. I enjoy when a trend is accessible, or you probably already have them in your wardrobe. My mum has worn Havaianas every day for my entire life, so it’s nice to see a trend setter like her get her moment. Since starting Taippe, I very rarely buy new. If I’m not wearing Taippe or something from my mum’s wardrobe, something is seriously wrong with me.
The legacy
Collaborating with Pellador has been our proudest moment yet, especially getting to work with Guinness through them. Making beautiful clothing with people you can call your friends has been a dream come true. We also believe we might have made the best jacket in the world in this collection.
We want to be remembered for making high-quality, durable garments. As we always say, they are “made to last”. The textiles are the most important element for us as they are all made beautifully in Portugal. I think this is something that makes us stand out. We sometimes say that we were a clothing brand with an emphasis on textiles. Community, events and all the fun elements of the brand are important, but high quality product is our number one concern.
If I could have anyone wear our designs, it would probably be Grian Chatten. I can picture him in our Taippellador suit trousers.
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