Lorraine Keane goes all in on pre-loved fashion with booming charity initiative

Sunday World

3 days ago

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'I blew my first pay packet on Prada boots and my mom had to lend me my bus fare'
The television star is among the 66,182 families across the country gearing up for the Leaving Cert exams this week.
But her youngest daughter with musician husband Peter Devlin, Romy, is aiming high as she sets her sights on studying law at third level.
'She's working her ass off, God love her,' continues Lorraine. 'She's a great little actress, and she's an amazing singer, and she always said that she wanted to do music as a career, but she decided that she was going to follow the academic route first.'
Lorraine with her daughters Emilia and Romy at the VIP Style Awards
The former Xposé presenter now has a passion project of her own after setting up charity initiative Fashion Relief, which has raised a staggering €400,000 for Breast Cancer Ireland in just 18 months .
And it all began when she decided to 'KonMari' her envious walk-in wardrobe at home in Monkstown, south Dublin, she tells Magazine+ , as she sifts through the latest haul of pre-loved gems destined for the Frascati Centre clothing store in nearby Blackrock.
'I'd come back from my 11th trip to the developing world, to Bangladesh, to see the garment workers who don't get paid a living wage. All these amazing, beautiful women who don't even get to see their children because they're living in slums and working in factories,' says Lorraine.
Lorraine Keane with the TV3 Xpose presenters
'Seeing how fast fashion was destroying our planet and destroying lives.
'So I came back and decided to do a wardrobe clearout, and mentioned it to a couple of people in the business, and they were all like, 'Jesus, I'll give you some stuff' … anyway, it ended up turning into a massive event in the RDS.'
Fast forward seven years, and the annual fashion spectacular, which went online during lockdown, has grown into the permanent boutique, which Lorraine says resells 'everything from Zara to Prada', with the stylish star having to resist the urge to buy more than she donates.
'Myself and [fellow managers] Michelle and Marie are probably the best customers, because we do get incredible pieces in,' she jokes. 'Everything's above board. I don't want people to think that I'm pricing it and then buying it — we have professional pricers that do that for us!
'For me, I've always loved finding a bargain, and boasting about it. I always shopped second-hand, as we used to call it back then.
Lorraine and Peter Devlin married in 2003
'For me, it's even more special because it's unique. If it's a designer piece that you're getting at a bargain price, the fabric, the cut, everything is more superior, so you're getting a piece that has longevity; it's already been around for whatever amount of time, and it'll last.'
Although relatively ruthless when it comes to clearing out, Lorraine, who also has her own gradual tanning cream called Decadence made by Irish brand Beauti Edit, admits there are some investment items she could never bear to part with.
'I have a lovely Jean Paul Gaultier two-piece that I bought for my first appearance on The Late Late Show with the gorgeous Gay Byrne, [and] I still get wear out of it.
'I've a pair of Prada boots that I bought for myself with my first wages in AA Roadwatch, we didn't earn that much, [but] I spent my entire month's salary on them… my mom had to lend me my bus fare.
Lorraine Keane's Fashion Relief pre-loved clothing boutique
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'I didn't have any money to go out, so I stayed in and wore them, and watched The Late Late Show three Friday nights in a row — I got out on the fourth,' she laughs. 'Imagine, I still have them — they're still absolutely perfect.'
The boots have stood the test of time, and so too, has her association with tailbacks, Lorraine reveals, as she's still recognised as the voice of traffic updates in the pre-Google map era.
'Oh, my goodness, I was so lucky,' she reflects on the radio presenting gig that helped turn her into a household name. 'To be on national radio, and repeating my name time and time again.
Lorraine at the shop in the Frascati Centre
News in 90 Seconds - 3rd June 2025
'It opened up so many doors and opportunities for me, so it's [an association] I'll never get sick of, and I'm always proud of.
'In fact, it's the one thing I still [am known for],' adds Lorraine, who started out on TV subbing for Thelma Mansfield on Live at 3 alongside the late Derek Davis. 'I get into a taxi, and I'll be chatting away, and then nine times out of ten, the taximan will look in the wing mirror, and he'll go, 'Are you Lorraine Keane, AA Roadwatch?' So it won't be that they'll recognise my face, it's the voice — it's so funny.'
In recent years, she's lent that instantly recognisable voice to the cause of women's health. Long before Davina McCall in the UK or Drew Barrymore in the US, the Dubliner was the first to normalise speaking openly about perimenopause and menopause in the public eye, and she recalls thinking long and hard about becoming Ireland's poster girl for 'the change'.
Lorraine Keane's Fashion Relief pre-loved clothing boutique
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'Oh my God, I was so nervous about it,' says the 53-year-old. 'Back then, it was seen as your last stage of life — you were old and decrepit and past it when you were in menopause.
'And that's why women were embarrassed and ashamed to talk about it, it was their dirty little secret: 'Sweep it under the carpet, just get on with it, put up and shut up'.
'I was 38 when I went into perimenopause, but because I had suffered in silence for so long, not knowing that that's what it was, and that it was something that I could actually manage, then I just thought, 'OK, this is ridiculous'.
'Why are we made to feel like this when there's nothing we can do about it? From feckin' PMS to periods, periods to pregnancy, pregnancy to postnatal depression to endometriosis… why? Because we were given the reproductive organs to do all this.
'There's no way God is a woman,' continues Lorraine, 'because if she was a woman, she would have spread it out more evenly. Read more
'Because then we go into perimenopause, or menopause, we're supposed to be embarrassed about it? No chance. We should be worshipped, we should be adored and minded, and cared for — it should be the opposite. That's why I was like, 'Screw this, I'm going to talk about this'. I just decided, 'Put your money where your mouth is, you're always saying you're a woman's woman, and we should support women more', and it's been the best thing I've ever done.'
Far from 'past it', the mum-of-two was the picture of glamour when she attended the VIP Style Awards with her two daughters, Emelia (21), who has just earned a drama degree, and Romy last month, and she says it's down to weight lifting that the three, three decades apart, can share frocks.
'I love the fact that my daughters say, 'It's not about being skinnier, mom, it's about being stronger',' tells Lorraine, who does three 30 minute workouts per week. 'When we were growing up, we were told, 'Eat less carbs, pound the pavements', whereas now we realise that's actually wrong; we need to be eating more protein and we need to do more weight resistance training.
'It was lovely to have the opportunity to get dressed up, and to see the event through their eyes, because I've been going for a long time now, 22 years.
'The stage they're at, 18 and 21, it's great now that they can actually share my wardrobe with me. I wouldn't say now that I'd share much of theirs — but they can definitely dip into mine!'