Cead mille failte tote

this tote, in the colours of the Irish flag, reads céad míle fáilte or one hundred thousand welcomes. you could say it’s a bit over the top, but the fact that this phrase is so widely used says a lot about how central a warm welcome is to the irish psyche. as a nation, our greatest export has always been people, which might explain why being hospitable sits so close to our hearts. you give the welcome you hope to receive abroad.

i’d been toying with the idea of doing something with the Irish flag since last october, when I found myself feeling slightly wary of it in certain contexts, a strange feeling, given it was originally conceived as a symbol of peace and inclusion. designed to be deeply symbolic with green representing irish nationalists and catholics, orange representing the protestant minority, and white as the hope for peace and lasting union between them. inspired by the french tricolour, our flags meaning, at its core, has always been about unity.

and yet, both the flag and the language have had complicated journeys. Irish was, at times, used as a way to exclude and divide, but much has been done to reclaim it. now, throwing in your cúpla focal, no matter how limited, is the height of fashion. the flag, meanwhile, despite its origins, has in some contexts been taken up as a symbol of exclusion, its original meaning occasionally lost.

designed in-house by the lovely Shawn this tote is an attempt to bring the two ideas of inclusion and hospitality back together. by combining the tricolour with céad míle fáilte, it reasserts what both were always meant to represent. and placing that message on a tote, an everyday object that carries not just your shopping but a bit of cultural capital, feels like a small, wearable way to spread it.

so if you fancy getting your hands on one, and carrying that message with you, you know what to do.