Irish Design · County Donegal
Meet Sarah Lorraine, the Donegal Designer Reviving a Century-Old Family Shop
In the wild, windswept Gaeltacht of West Donegal, one designer is turning her great-grandmother’s dressmaking shop into one of Ireland’s most talked-about fashion labels.
Pictured: Sarah Lorraine’s Dungloe boutique — the label’s second store, alongside the original in Bunbeg
By The Editors · Bunbeg & Dungloe, Co. Donegal
There’s a particular kind of light that falls over Gweedore in the late afternoon — the kind that turns the Atlantic silver and the hillsides the color of strong tea. It’s the same light that spills through the windows of a small shop on the main street of Bunbeg, where a young designer named Sarah Lorraine Gallagher is quietly building one of the most compelling fashion stories to come out of Ireland in years.
Step inside, and you’ll find racks of soft cashmere, bolts of local tweed, and tailoring that wouldn’t look out of place on Grafton Street or the Rue Saint-Honoré — except everything here carries the unmistakable imprint of the Donegal coastline that surrounds it. This is Sarah Lorraine, the label, and this corner of the Irish-speaking Gaeltacht is very much its home.
A Homecoming, Generations in the Making
The story of Sarah Lorraine doesn’t begin with Sarah at all — it begins with her great-grandmother, Annie Bonner, who ran a dressmaking shop on this same Bunbeg street more than a century ago after returning home from Glasgow. When Sarah reopened those doors under her own name, she wasn’t just launching a label; she was picking up a needle her family had set down generations earlier.
“The same street, the same trade, a hundred years apart.”
Sarah is also the daughter of Patrick Gallagher, of the beloved Irish band Goats Don’t Shave — so this is a family with music and craft running through its veins in equal measure.
The Look: Donegal, Distilled Into Clothing
Ask Sarah where her ideas come from, and the answer is always the same place: outside her front door. The rugged coastline, the shifting weather, the muted, mossy palette of the hills — it all shows up in her collections, translated into tailored suits, cropped tweed jackets, cashmere knits, and silk-and-cashmere herringbone scarves generous enough to double as wraps.
The “Wild Atlantic Cape,” one of the label’s best sellers, named for the coastline that inspired it.
Her taste runs toward the classic — think Coco Chanel, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Jackie O — but nothing here feels costume-y or nostalgic. The palette stays soft and washed-out, the tweeds have texture without bulk, and the tailoring is cut to flatter rather than restrict.
A hand-knit Aran sweater, styled on the water – part of the “Made in Donegal” line, made with aunthentice local tweed and stiched by a small team of Donegal dressmakers.
Sarah Lorraine in one of her own tailored pieces
Two Boutiques Worth the Detour
If you’re mapping out a trip along the Wild Atlantic Way, both Sarah Lorraine boutiques are worth building a stop around:
- Bunbeg — the original shop, set in the very building once run by Sarah’s great-grandmother, right in the heart of the Gweedore Gaeltacht.
- Dungloe — the label’s newer outpost at 18 Lower Main Street, opened as the brand’s following grew well beyond West Donegal.
Both stores stock the full range of knitwear, tailoring, occasionwear, and accessories, and both feel less like a typical retail experience than a stop into someone’s very personal, very beautifully edited closet.
The Atelier: Bridal and Occasionwear
The Sarah Lorraine Atelier — a curated edit of bridal and occasionwear pieces.
Alongside her ready-to-wear collections, Sarah has also launched the Sarah Lorraine Atelier, a dedicated line of bridal and special-occasion pieces. It’s a natural next step for a designer whose tailoring already leans toward the elegant and formal, and it’s quickly become a destination in its own right for brides looking for something with real Donegal provenance.
A Rising Star, Recognized Well Beyond Donegal
What started as a local boutique has quickly become a genuine Irish fashion export. Sarah was named Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the Letterkenny Chamber of Commerce Awards, and her story recently caught the attention of RTÉ’s Nationwide, which filmed a feature on her in Gaoth Dobhair as part of a women-in-business special. Her work has also been featured in outlets including the Irish Independent and Woman’s Way. The label now ships to customers across Ireland and internationally, and Sarah has hosted charity fashion showcases — pairing runway moments with fine Donegal dining — in support of the RNLI Irish lifeboats, a nod to the county’s deep-rooted fishing heritage.
How She'd Style It
Sarah’s own approach to dressing is as unfussy and elegant as her collections. Her go-to formula: soft layers in creams, oatmeal, and pale blush; a slightly cropped tweed jacket over a silk blouse or fine knit; tailored coats that do double duty from morning errands to evening dinners; and breathable fabrics like cotton, silk, and lightweight cashmere swapped in as the seasons shift.
PLANNING YOUR VISIT
Where: Bunbeg and Dungloe, Co. Donegal, Ireland — both within easy reach of a Wild Atlantic Way road trip
Dungloe Store: 18 Lower Main Street, An Clochán Liath, Co. Dhún na nGall, F94 D962
Hours: Wed–Sat, 10am–5pm; Sun 11am–4pm (winter hours — confirm ahead of your visit)
Online: sarahlorraine.ie, shipping across Ireland and internationally
Follow along: @sarahlorrainedonegal on Instagram
Need to Know
Sarah Lorraine Gallagher works out of the same Bunbeg street her great-grandmother once did, but the label has since outgrown it — a second shop in Dungloe opened as demand spread beyond West Donegal, and pieces now ship out of sarahlorraine.ie to customers well beyond Ireland. What sets the collections apart isn’t just the tweed itself, sourced from Donegal weavers, but the scale: much of it is made in small, limited runs by a local team of dressmakers rather than produced en masse, which is also why the “Made in Donegal” pieces tend to sell through quickly.
Annie Bonner’s dressmaking shop closed decades ago. It’s open again now, under a different name, with the same door.
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