For more than a decade, Declan O'Sullivan has been the man behind Cork's leading clothing alterations service, The Clothes Doctor based on Academy Street in the heart of the city.

Carrying out alterations for a host of clients ranging from individuals to retail stores, over the years Declan has built up a solid reputation in the business in Cork. Now well established as part of the fashion community it has taken Declan the best part of 20 years to cement his position as the man to go to for alterations in Cork.

Of course, it wasn't always that way. Growing up in the Murmount area as one of six children in the 70s and 80s Declan always had an interest in clothes but translating that into a business was easier said than done in the bad old days.

"I always had an interest in fashion and music," he says, "it was just something I enjoyed". Cork in early 80s when Declan left Mayfield Community School wasn't exactly a land of opportunity. "They were tough times, most people either left altogether or signed on the dole. There simply wasn't any work."

Declan decided to stay in Cork but despite the harsh economic climate his interest in clothes endured.

"I used to alter my own clothes and friends stated taking notice so I did it for them as well." From humble beginnings Declan already knew that this was something he enjoyed, from alterations for friends he moved on to making clothes as well and realised that maybe he could make a few quid in the progress. A real boost to his early career came from an unlikely source, the hit 80s TV show Miami Vice.

"Everybody wanted to look like Crocket and Tubbs so I started making Hawaiian shirts. I used to go down to Hickeys Fabrics and get the material and then make up the shirts. When I used to see people wearing one of my loud Hawaiian shirts at mass or somewhere like that it really brought a smile to my face".

Declan was progressing in the business, despite the lack of opportunities in Cork at the time. As well as the hands on experience of doing his own thing he took a night course at the School of Commerce with a tailor in 1983 and followed that with a City & Guilds in fashion design from the Cork College of Fashion. By this stage he was making money from what had been his hobby and was enjoying the work as much as ever.

Despite his increasing success, this was still the 80s and jobs were hard to come by. Declan still couldn't survive on his own work alone. "The business had contracted in a big way in Cork. There weren't many people making clothes at all so really had to take what you could get," he remembers. For a while he worked in one of the pharmaceutical plants in Little Island while maintaining his true calling in his free time. Second hand clothes were a big part of working in fashion then and Declan managed to get a job managing a second-hand clothes store, hardly Savile Row but at least it was his chosen industry.

From there he went on Ivory Towers, a well-known clothing specialist where he worked as a cutter, all the time gaining experience. By the 90s the economy had finally turned the corner and opportunities began to materialise.