fashion clothing textiles genre retail founded 1970s headquarters grafton street dublin ireland area served ireland united kingdom products women s retail fashion website official website a wear was an irish chain of women s clothing stores with a wide number of operations in the republic of ireland and northern ireland . the brand also operated internationally through its online store at awear.com and stores within the united kingdom . it ceased trading in january 2014 . contents 1 ownership 2 clothing range 3 stores 4 references 5 external links ownership edit the brand a wear first started out as gaywear . the first store opened in limerick in 1966 . the store expanded nationwide in 1973 when galen weston s retail empire invested in the company . in 1985 it was rebranded as a wear . up until 2007 the stores were owned by the brown thomas group . in may 2007 a consortium led by alchemy partners purchased the company for 70 million from the brown thomas group . 1 in late 2011 due to the continued economic downturn and high retail rents in the republic of ireland alchemy partners announced it was to go into receivership . on october 17 2011 2 hilco groups s hilco capital ireland ltd purchased the company and its debt . on 15 february 2012 hilco placed a wear into receivership . on february 16 2012 it was confirmed that a wear operations in the republic of ireland and northern ireland were purchased out of receivership . 3 an international consortium headed by michael flacks of flacks group bought the company and will continue to operate the 32 stores in ireland with possible expansion . 4 in 2013 a wear re entered the uk retail market after going into receivership in december 2011 ; it currently operates its clothing range from 10 house of fraser stores in the uk only and will open its own stand alone stores in autumn winter 2013 . the new look uk stores will showcase the new look a wear branding and stores which will be rolled out in the republic of ireland also in autumn . 5 in october 2013 a wear confirmed that its parent company went into examinership . after failing to exit examinership successfully on thursday november 28 2014 all a wear stores in the republic of ireland ceased operation after the appointment of kavanagh fennell 6 as receiver by chelsey investissement sa . 7 its concession stores in the united kingdom also ceased operations . 300 jobs are at risk . the appointed receiver noted that some stores would remain closed with the possibility of retaining more profitable stores with the aim to sell these stores to a suitable buyer . 8 its loss making online store awear.com has also ceased trading at that time . on november 28 2013 the company entered receivership . 9 by early december a number of stores in dublin and sligo were reopened . as of the week beginning december 9 the following stores have reopened blanchardstown castlebar limerick crescent sc galway grafton street dundrum liffey valley sligo swords all other stores remain closed . its cork flagship store on patrick s street which was one of the its biggest stores and its store in mahon point will not reopen . its online store will not reopen . the remaining stores closed during the period from 24 december 2013 to 11 january 2014 when the final store shut its doors . clothing range edit previous fashion designers who have designed for a wear include john rocha quin and donnelly marc o neill and peter o brien . prior to 2000 a wear stores in ireland also had a range of men s clothing . today stores primarily focus on female clothing and accessories . awear.com and awear.ie is the online home to a wear where the stores items are available to purchase online . stores edit former stores blanchardstown castlebar limerick crescent sc galway grafton street dundrum liffey valley sligo letterkenny swords previous stores republic of ireland carlow cork dublin limerick galway kildare offaly kerry tipperary waterford wexford northern ireland antrim down armagh united kingdom in administration since 22 december 2011 in administration again in october 2013 glasgow scotland bristol england leicestershire england staffordshire england swansea wales references edit a wear sold for 70m irish independent a wear acquired by hilco retail week a wear bought out of receivership retail week a wear sale secures 460 jobs rt a wear enters uk market irish independent receiver appointed to a wear rt a wear goes into receivership irish times receiver appointed to a wear rt a wear enters receivership archived from the original on 2014 03 03 external links edit official website retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title a wear & oldid 742480372 categories clothing retailers navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 4 october 2016 at 00 10 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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