The History of the Unique Rain Skirt
Belfast Rain! How much and how often it rains rains rains…..A few years before establishing BELFAST RAIN, Joanna Karolini, decided that rain trousers were a pain; ‘Too clumsy, too awkward and too humid”.
The showers came (and are still coming) without warning. Cycling in town or walking from A to B, the knees got wet, the jeans heavy and damp, her joints often felt like she was 86.
Borrowing from literature; she daydreamed about the Russian grand-mother with the 7 skirts on top of each other; imagined so well by Gunter Grass. One for Monday, one for Tuesday…special for Sunday….! So Joanna made one from a tent as this proved to be a great material; light, colourful and especially water resistant. “You may be wearing a tent –but you don’t look like one’’
Around when she was 28, which is quite late, she went to one of the big music festivals. As tickets were sold out, she was magically catapulted over the fence and landed in one of the camping sites. A sea of tents. 60.000 people on a field.
Monday came, and people disappeared with their hangovers but not their tents and rubbish. Of course it rained. Depression set in. Tents, rubbish and Irish mud.