Meet the Locals: Karen from Dublin

Among the tree-lined streets of Rathmines, Dublin, designer Karen O’Rourke has curated a homey haven filled with thrifted treasures and heirlooms.

Photographs by Jacobia Dahm

The Local

Karen O’ Rourke is a vintage furniture aficionado who makes her living as an interior designer in some of Dublin’s modern home developments. But despite that work, her personal taste runs very classical. “I couldn’t live in a modern place myself,” she said. “I’d love to go and stay in one, but I’d never want to live there permanently. There’s just something about old houses that draws me in. I love gold and gilt and velvet and mirrors and chandeliers.” She has decorated her own house accordingly.

Karen came to interior design from the world of fashion and textiles — a creative environment where color, texture, structure, and shape became her language. She quickly learned how to translate two-dimensional patterns into three-dimensional pieces. Then Karen ventured into interior decorating, and took that approach in her new line of work. While most of her peers used ready-made furniture, she preferred to design sofas, chairs, and other pieces herself, and have them custom made for each unique home. It satisfied her creativity and her desire to turn empty spaces into homes that reflected the dreams of their owners.

“Designing furniture for homes gave me complete freedom,” she said. “When I go into a new home or an inhabited home that I’m redesigning, I think about how the person might live in that space and what they would aspire to. When people walk into a space that’s planned, instead of just designed by necessity, it takes them out of their everyday life; it makes them stop and think about what life could be.”

In her free time, Karen walks and trains dogs. She admitted she’s likelier to have photos of canine family members on the walls than snapshots of her human relatives. Her own dogs are Sienna and Rufus — a Springer Labrador and a Springer Collie, respectively. “The most striking thing you learn when you study dogs and dog training is that they have their own highly sophisticated language,” she said. “They have up to 92 different facial expressions that they use to communicate with one another. In order to see what was going on between them, I needed to learn that language.”

Her House

Karen mused that if she traces her style inspiration back to childhood, it probably came from her great aunt. She was a talented seamstress and homemaker who used to make clothing for Karen and the entire family. “She was a really gifted lady. She made all our stuff and hand-embroidered it. So I grew up being exposed to detail and quality, and I think I must have been like a sponge absorbing everything,” she said.

Karen’s great aunt died when Karen was eight. But up until then, she visited her at her home in the Rathmines neighborhood, where Karen now lives, too. Buying a home there was the culmination of a lifelong dream. “It’s just a real pleasure and a privilege to be able to live here,” she said.

Today, Karen’s Airbnb Plus home is decorated with pieces that remind her of her great aunt’s style and traditional Irish craftsmanship she loved. There are copper hot water bottles, fine china, and an irreplaceable black and white photo of her great aunt and uncle.

But for all her love of rare antiques and precious pieces, Karen prides herself most on her ability to display beautiful objects into her home in a way that doesn’t feel precious or off-limits. “At the end of the day, most people come into my house and say, ‘It’s amazing inside, but it’s still a home.’ I like that. It’s homey, comfortable, and relaxing. Gorgeous — but not a showpiece.”

The Neighborhood

Rathmines, is in Dublin’s sixth district. Karen moved there nearly 20 years ago, and never looked back. “I always wanted to own a redbrick house here,” she said. “It’s a traditionally Irish neighborhood, full of families and good schools and some amazing, beautiful houses, most of which were built in the late 1800s.” It’s green, too. Within a five-minute walk, Karen and her dogs can reach four public parks.

Rathmines is also filled with stores that cater to Karen’s vintage obsession. “There are lots of antique stores in the neighborhood, and I hunt the whole time — everybody knows me. I cannot pass a door to one without going in. I’m always scanning, scanning. … You never know what will be in there.” Her love of fashion is well catered to in the consignment shops nearby, too. “You can buy designer shoes and dresses for a quarter of the price. I recently bought a coat for $300 that would have been $1,200 off the rack,” she said. “One time I saw these Prada boots. I thought about them for a week before I went back to buy them, but by that time they were gone. I searched around everywhere for something similar, which of course there wasn’t. But I kept going back to the same vintage store, and one day the shopkeeper told me that the last buyer had returned them; they were too big for her. I own them now.”

The neighborhood is also near Dublin’s center, a mere twenty-five-minute walk “in a straight line,” she said. On the way, Karen passes towering Victorian-era homes that inspire her. “It’s just a real pleasure to live here.”

Karen’s Dublin Picks:

Bibi’s: This delicious restaurant is located in a really old part of Dublin called Portobello, so there are these little artisan cottages everywhere around it. Everything there is made on the premises, including their delicious bread. I love the house-made sourdough with avocado smash and poached eggs on top.

Benezet: I love this vintage store because their stuff is changing all the time. It must be because they’re located in the Rathgar neighborhood, which is filled with big, beautiful houses, and the man who runs it combs the local estate sales.

Farmleigh: Situated on the northwest edge of Dublin’s Phoenix Park, Farmleigh is an Edwardian-era estate. It has a working farm, an art gallery, and an official state guesthouse. “It’s the most beautiful house — the woodwork and paneling is just stunning. And what I love about it is that it’s not so enormous. You can actually imagine yourself living in it. Plus, I love their weekend market and their tea rooms.”

№38: “This designer consignment fashion store is about a 15-minute walk from my house. It’s really small, the sort of shop that you would hardly know was there — there are only two long rails of clothing. But they have designer stuff that you just wouldn’t be able to buy at full price. I go in there for my weekend ‘treat.’”

National Museum of Ireland: “They have an amazing collection of fashion and textiles. And there’s a permanent exhibition by IB Jorgensen, who was one of Ireland’s premier designers. I trained with him back when I was learning, specifically training on cutting, and there are a couple of things in that exhibition that I would have actually cut for him.”

About the author: Breena Kerr is a Maui-based freelance writer and journalist whose work appears in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The Washington Post, CNN, and BBC, among others.

About the photographer: Jacobia Dahm is a Berlin-based photojournalist with focus on portraiture and reportage and a longstanding interest in social justice. Her work has been published internationally by media outlets such as The New York Times, ZEIT, The Village Voice, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, and GEO. Dahm also regularly teaches workshops and lectures at universities.