Meet Helen James, the designer behind Dunnes Stores' considered range

I make myself do things that I’m scared of – and it has always paid off,” says Helen James on learning to embrace her fear of change. “And it’s usually those things that scare you the most that pay off the most.”

We have been chatting for over an hour at Considered Café on Dublin’s Drury St, which Helen designed for Dunnes Stores, from the menu to the Instagram-able interiors, including a chalkboard that proclaims “I am sorry for what I said when I was hungry.”

It’s the latest chapter in her 20-plus year career that first saw her move to New York as a young graduate with just $500 dollars and a one-way ticket to working with Donna Karan before returning to raise her young family in rural Ireland – and then being forced to emigrate a second time when the recession wiped out her business.

But the mother-of-three – whose Considered homeware and food range is key to the ongoing reinvention of Dunnes Stores – says sometimes you just have to feel the fear and do it anyway.

“And sometimes you do make a wrong decision,” she says. “But you always get something out of it. You always learn something about yourself.”

Early days in Dublin

Helen grew up in Dublin, where her father was the Islamic curator at the Chester Beatty Library, while her mother had an amazing eye for interiors.

“Any time there was a skip, she’d screech to a stop,” smiles Helen.

Little wonder that she decided to study textiles at NCAD, but with minimal opportunities in Ireland in the early 90s, applied for the US green card and went to New York with just $500 and an offer of a friend’s floor to sleep on.

“And within a week or two, I was in the residency of the Malaysian Embassy, helping them pick the wallpaper,” she says of her first job with an interior design company.

Further contacts led to work with Donna Karan and a major US cotton company, but eager to strike out on her own, Helen converted her one-bed apartment into a studio (she covered the bath with a printing block) and started to design her own scarves and accessories, which were later sold throughout the States.

“And then September 11 happened,” says Helen, who at that stage had two sons with her husband, musician Mark Geary.

“When that happened I felt: ‘This is actually going to change America,’” she recalls. “‘It’s going to open an era of fear – and I don’t want to bring my kids up in that.’”

Helen yearned for a slower pace of life, space to grow her own food and flowers, fields for her boys to play in. Looking online, she came across a former farm steward’s cottage in Castlepollard, Co Westmeath, came home and began the long renovation process.

“After a year, it still had no central heating, I had no car, I had no washing machine, but I was like: ‘We just have to go and get into it,’” she recalls. “For six months, it was basically like glamping.”

Despite her dreams of self-sufficiency, Helen admits she “hadn’t a clue” when she first started her kitchen garden and it was only through trial – and a lot of error – that she started growing and baking, charting her adventures on her blog and becoming involved in organisations like Westmeath Slow Food.

At the same time, she was also establishing her design business in Ireland, selling her scarves and accessories into high-end stores and showing in Paris, until the recession hit and wiped her out as accounts began to close and orders went unpaid.

“I suppose I was very naive,” she says, looking back. “I was a sole trader, I never set up a limited company – all the debt was mine; I had to take it along.”

With both Helen and her husband self-employed, they could not afford to wait for things to turn. Once again, Helen crossed the Atlantic to look for work and was offered the role of design director with Donna Karan, working on luxury bedding. She accepted the job and within three weeks “packed up the house, painted it and got on a plane” with Mark and their three boys, Obi (then 12), Luan (10) and Cy (one.)

However, while the role was a chance of a lifetime, the children struggled to adjust to city life and after a year, Helen knew they had to return home.

“The decision to come back was actually really difficult,” she says. “But at the end of the day if the kids are crying themselves to sleep every night, it doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters.”

Helen admits that she did agonise over what she would do in Ireland after walking away from a dream job, where her designs were selling in high-end US stores like Bloomingdales. However, after a spell working with Avoca, Dunnes Stores called her to come in for a meeting and she walked out with her own brand.

“It’s such an incredible platform for me,” says Helen, who explains that the Considered range is very much inspired by her time in Westmeath, fusing function with style, with her involvement in every single detail, “down to the type of the string that is on the Swinger”.

The main Considered range includes bake and table wear, textiles, cushions, gifts, stationery and even furniture. As well as the café on Drury St, there is also a Considered food range, where Helen works with Irish producers to create products inspired by her country kitchen, such as blackcurrant and chocolate syrups, mixed berry jam with a hint of lavender, grapefruit and chamomile marmalade, and brownie mix. Currently in 21 selected Dunnes Stores, customers can also buy online.

The demands of the job mean that Helen and her family have recently relocated to Dublin, though her heart remains in Westmeath, where they continue to spend breaks.

So, as the season changes, so does life for Helen James once more, but she learned that it’s not such a bad thing after all.

“I’m scared of change,” she concludes, “but I’m more afraid of inertia.”

Considered Café by Helen James

35/36 Drury Street, Dublin 2

www.dunnesstores.com