To celebrate her third collaboration with Irish designer Sinead Keary, British Influencer and author Lydia Millen tells Marie Kelly about her tailoring heritage, why ordinary moments mean more than milestones and how to live ‘a lovely life’.
Lydia Millen is deep in the restoration of a 200-year-old fisherman’s cottage on the Norfolk coast, soon to be her holiday home, so a night in one of the luxury cottages at Cliff at Lyons is a welcome chance to add to her mental moodboard. “I’m taking so much inspiration from this beautiful interior,” she says enthusiastically.
The British lifestyle influencer and author is in Ireland for a whirlwind 24 hours, splitting her time between Dublin and Kildare to celebrate her third collaboration with Irish fashion designer Sinead Keary. Shortly after our interview, the glass-walled orangery at this countryside retreat will fill with friends of the label, each dressed in a look from the eight-piece capsule collection.
Designed around a new colourway called Evergreen, this edit feels especially personal to Millen, not only because the name nods to her 2023 book of the same title, but because it includes a suit that pays tribute to her family’s tailoring heritage. Millen’s maternal grandfather was the master tailor at Huntsman Savile Row, a bespoke London tailors established in 1849. “He was an absolutely incredible tailor. I used to sit on his workbench in the workroom at the top of the house and watch him with his chalks. They’re my fondest memories. The fact that there is a suit in my edit with Sinead is incredibly special to me,” she says.
Millen has chosen this tonal two-piece – The Lydia Wrap Blazer and the Sandra Satin Trouser – to wear to today’s launch. It embodies her particular brand of “soft power”, she explains. “Getting dressed for a day with the team, it almost feels like a suit of armour. It’s my power suit, but a soft one: really in line with my style, yet still with those classic lines of suiting. It’s lovely.”
The 38-year-old influencer has made softness her signature, from the unhurried rhythms of her life in the Northamptonshire countryside with her husband – men’s lifestyle content creator Ali Gordon – to her layered, cosy interiors and a wardrobe chosen as much for how it feels as how it looks. With 1.8 million followers on Instagram, she’s tapped into an audience with an appetite for slowness and substance.
Her feed is about far more than fashion and home furnishings. Rituals, reflections, mindful routines and recipes from Evergreen: Discover the Joy in Every Season lend the account a warmth and intimacy that feels more like a favourite comfort watch than a typical aspirational social media feed. Millen believes life is shaped less by milestones and more by ordinary moments.
“We put so much emphasis on life’s big moments, but what I’m really exploring at the moment is the smaller ones, like the feeling of putting on a nice pair of pyjamas. It’s the small things you do with consciousness and intention throughout the day that come together to make a lovely life. I probably overthink it sometimes, but it comes from wanting everyone to live a lovely life, because you only get one,” she says.
The 38-year-old influencer has made softness her signature, from the unhurried rhythms of her life in the Northamptonshire countryside with her husband to her layered, cosy interiors and a wardrobe chosen as much for how it feels as how it looks.
The Tartan Bamboo Sleepwear set is one of Millen’s favourite items from the Sinead Keary edit. “Feeling lovely in the moments when it doesn’t make a difference is so important. It’s not a show for anybody else; it’s all about how things feel to you. That’s a really important distinction. When you’re focused on how something makes you feel, that’s a connection with yourself that is really transformative.”
Millen describes herself and Keary as “kindred spirits”, and the collaboration is rooted in admiration for the woman as much as the label. “She’s a shining example of something we don’t hear enough said about women in business: that you can be a lovely, soft, kind human and still be an absolute powerhouse. She’s a real testament to that.” Millen believes the best collaborations are built on mutual understanding, and what began as a working partnership has grown, over the past four years, into a genuine friendship. Keary, Millen says, also embodies the ethos at the heart of her book. “She’s a very joyful person – almost magnetic in a way – and she really draws you to her.”
The “classic, playful femininity” embodied by Keary runs through this edit, making it an ideal collection to draw on for the festive season. Millen refers to Christmas as “the sparkle season” so sequins and embellishments land across the edit, lending pieces such as The Jennifer Velvet Skirt and Velvet Jacket a touch of festive shimmer. For Millen, the appeal of this two-piece lies in its versatility. The skirt, she suggests, looks quietly glamorous with a black cashmere polo-neck and a velvet headband or bow – a pared-back but playful take on “high-society New York style”. The jacket can then be worn with tailored trousers. “It’s a real hack for festive dressing,” she says. “You’re getting so many more festive outfits from the pieces that you’ve got.”
The Jessica Coat is another notable piece in Millen’s edit. “It works really well with jeans, but then you can style it with something more elevated because of the satin buttons and large lapels.” She believes a good coat is an investment that should work really hard in your wardrobe.
This slower approach to fashion grew out of a growing unease with an industry that had simply started to feel relentless. “Fashion got a little too fast, and it became too hard to keep up with. I wanted things to last longer in my wardrobe and I wanted to know how they were made, who was designing them and why. Those things matter to me now, far more than being told something is the ‘It’ item. I want to know why it’s going to be a good piece for me to have.”
Millen feels a strong sense of responsibility towards her followers and wants them to spend their hard-earned money on pieces that earn their place in a wardrobe. “Whenever I talk about or work on a product, I’m not just thinking about how it serves me but how it serves my audience; they’re always at the forefront of her mind.” Her most valuable advice is to notice how you feel in your clothes. “Having that connection with yourself, knowing ‘this just doesn’t feel like me’ and not trying to force it, is super important.”
For Millen, it has been a “slow unlearning” of everything she thought fashion was about, and a patient “relearning” of what “style and longevity” truly mean. Her greatest inspiration for the latter is her 92-year-old paternal grandmother, whom she describes as “the most stylish and well put together woman”. “She looks incredible and she still takes so much pride in her appearance,” says Millen, “and it’s always centred around how something makes her feel.” Photos of the nonagenarian posted to TikTok by Millen have made her something of a legend among her granddaughter’s followers.
Millen takes inspiration from how her grandmother carries herself, lives her life and styles her interiors, all of which reinforce her own belief that: “Fashion is enduring and it’s timeless if you choose well.” To still have her grandmother’s influence every day is, she says, “pretty special”. “I feel so lucky.”
This article was originally published in The Sunday Times Ireland, November 2026