Úna Burke was born in a small village called Knockvicar, in County Roscommon in the West of Ireland. Her mother was a teacher and her father a farmer. They also kept guests in the family home, a wonderful old Georgian mansion called Riversdale House, which was formerly the residence of actress Maureen O'Sullivan, most famous for her role as Jane in the black and white Tarzan movies, and mother to actress Mia Farrow and Prudence Farrow, who inspired The Beetles song, "Dear Prudence". Growing up here with her four siblings, Úna enjoyed long summer days wandering through meadows by the shores of Lough Key, picking flowers and swaying on the swing or in a row-boat.
She began her career in 1998 at Limerick School of Art and Design, completing a four year degree in Fashion Design. She then went on to work with several fashion houses around Ireland, before moving to London in 2006 where she began a Masters Degree in Fashion Artefact at the prestigious Cordwainers College in London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London.
Her graduate collection won the 2009 LCF MA Design Award for Best Static Collection and she went on to win several more national and international Fashion, Art and Craft prizes, including a number of DCCI Future Maker Awards, The Golden Egg 2011 'Irish Fashion Designer of the Year' and nomination for the WGSN Global Fashion Awards in 2012. In 2019 she won an LIT Alumni Award for her contribution to culture and in 2020 and 2021 she won the Fashion and Accessories categories of the Irish Country Magazine "Irish Made Awards".
Úna set up her eponymous brand in 2010 in London, making both seasonal fashion collections and sculptural art pieces using her traditional leather-working techniques in her distinctly complex constructions. In January 2020 she moved home to her native Roscommon to continue her business with her partner Emmett Herbert and their son Leo.
The fashion collections have continued to be concept based, with human stories at their core. Influence is taken from psychological, military and medical sources as a physical reference to the warrior spirit within each one of us. The Art pieces are figurative in form and come from this same source of inspiration. They are developed on a commission basis for private art collections, public exhibitions and museum archives. Úna's work has been exhibited in over twenty countries throughout the world and her clients and collectors include New York Designer Phillip Lim, Seoul's Simone Handbag Museum, The National Museum of Ireland and and Nick Knights creative laboratory 'SHOWstudio'.
