Keeping Up with the Knights

The whole thing started with a prize.

Dawn Knight won a competition. The prize was a day at Punchestown — hair, beauty, tickets, and permission to bring one friend. She brought her twin.

"That was our first real experience of race-day fashion," Davinia says. "We got glammed up, headed to Punchestown and were completely captivated by the atmosphere."

What happened next is the part worth paying attention to. Two women had a good day out and decided to do it again — and then with their younger sister, and then seriously enough that one of them would walk away from Galway Ladies' Day with €10,000, another would be crowned at the Curragh two years running, and the third would win a race-day style award in a dress she had made out of curtains.

They are Dawn, Davinia and Cleo Knight, from Portarlington on the Laois–Offaly border. With their brother Barrie — who has worked in the fashion industry for years — they run the Knight Collective.

The account is @knightscollective — 686 posts, 2,568 followers when we looked — feeding out to @dawncurleyknight, @daviniaknight and @classic_cleox. The bio runs to five words that cover the entire editorial policy: "Fashion, pre-loved, classic style."

Three sisters, three completely different wardrobes

They do not dress alike. They have gone out of their way not to.

"I'd describe my style as classic and polished," Davinia says. "I love a timeless silhouette, beautiful tailoring and pieces that feel elegant without necessarily following every trend."

"I'm probably the more romantic one," says Dawn. "I love femininity, beautiful shapes, movement and those softer, more glamorous details."

"And I'd say I bring more of a contemporary element," Cleo says. "I like taking something classic and giving it a modern twist."

The other thing they volunteer, slightly gleefully, is how blunt they are with one another. "We're always honest with each other, which is probably one of our biggest strengths," says Dawn. "Very honest," says Davinia. "Sometimes perhaps a little too honest," says Cleo.

Which is, functionally, a styling process. "There is a lot of, 'What are you wearing?' 'What do you think of this?' 'Should I change the shoes?' — right up until we leave the house," Cleo says.

Galway, 2024, all in black

Race day in Ireland runs on colour. On Ladies' Day at the Galway Races, 1 August 2024, Davinia wore black.

The dress was the Amour ruffle midi by AJE — and, in the detail that keeps recurring in this family, it was rented, from Gúna Rentals Ireland. The headpiece, black mesh framing the face with a bow, came from Jennifer's Hat Emporium in Co. Kildare. She finished it with polka-dot mesh gloves, a black clutch and black-and-gold earrings.

The judges — stylist Mandy Maher, Kieran O'Malley of Connacht Hospitality Group and makeup artist Michelle Regazzoli-Stone — praised her "exquisite all-black ensemble and show-stopping headpiece." The prize was €10,000 in cash, the largest in Irish race fashion.

"I was absolutely stunned," she says. "It was such a huge moment, especially because of the calibre of the competition. I think I was almost in disbelief initially."

She had already won at Kilbeggan, and by her own account at Limerick, the Curragh and the K Club. Galway was different. "There's such a huge audience and such a strong fashion culture around Galway. To win there, and to win such a significant prize, felt like a real milestone."

The rented, the borrowed and the charity shop

Here is the thread running through every one of their wins, and it is not a press-release sustainability angle. It is checkable.

Galway, 2024: the winning dress was rented.

The Curragh, May 2024: Cleo won the Ashford Castle Style Icon award at the Tattersalls Irish Guineas Festival in a 1980s vintage dusty pink suit, with a hat from an NCBI charity shop and a clutch belonging to Davinia. "I was completely shocked to have won," she said at the time. "It was an absolute pinch me moment!"

The Curragh, May 2025: Davinia won the same award, two years running for the family. The sunshine-yellow Needle & Thread dress was rented from Nella.ie, the headpiece was Marc Millinery, the basket bag was borrowed from her mother and the shoes from her 21-year-old daughter.

Rented, vintage, charity shop, borrowed from your mother, borrowed from your daughter. Four winning looks at the most-watched style competitions in the country, and the amount of newly bought clothing in them is close to zero.

"There are so many beautiful pieces already out there," Cleo says, "and sometimes something vintage or pre-loved can have far more character than something brand new."

Dawn puts it more bluntly: "It's about looking at something and thinking, 'What could I turn this into?' rather than automatically thinking you need to buy something new. And honestly, I find that much more exciting creatively."

The dress made from curtains

On Juddmonte Irish Oaks weekend in July 2026, the Curragh ran a competition themed Styled by Nature, sponsored by Tulfarris Hotel & Golf Resort and judged by the broadcaster Emily O'Donnell.

Dawn won its sustainable style award in a dress she had designed and sewn herself out of repurposed curtains, worn with shoes from the Folkston Shoe Company in Edenderry and a headpiece rented from Harrington Hats in Laois. The prize was a two-night stay for two at Castlemartyr Resort.

"When I heard the Styled by Nature theme, I wanted to create something that truly embraced sustainability," she said afterwards.

Dawn is an art teacher, and that is not incidental — it is the whole explanation. "There's a very different kind of pride that comes from wearing something you've created with your own hands," she says. "I want to show that you don't necessarily have to buy something expensive or brand new to create something beautiful. Hopefully I can inspire other people — particularly young people — to see fashion as another form of creativity."

What the judges are actually looking for

Between them the Knights have been judged by Mandy Maher, Marietta Doran, Emily O'Donnell, Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh, Lisa Toomey and Arthur Gourounlian. Which makes their answer to this worth more than most — and it is not where a first-time entrant would expect.

"It's not necessarily about having the most expensive dress or the biggest hat," Dawn says. "It's about whether the look feels authentic to you and whether you carry it with confidence."

"Judges are looking for individuality," says Davinia. "Sometimes the simplest look can have the biggest impact if it's styled beautifully and the person really owns it."

"You could have the most incredible outfit in the world," Cleo says, "but if you don't feel comfortable and confident in it, it won't have the same impact."

Note what nobody said: spend more. Their own results are the argument. A rented dress won €10,000. A charity-shop hat won a five-star weekend. A pair of curtains won a sustainability title.

Beyond the rail

In June 2026 the twins did something with nothing to do with racing. Out of hundreds of applicants, Dawn and Davinia were both selected among the twenty finalists for Miss Universe Ireland. The final was held on 21 June at the Bonnington Hotel in Dublin and won by Aideen Howard from Limerick.

They did not take the crown. What they took was a platform, and what they did with it is why this section exists.

They put it behind Rainbows Ireland, which supports children through bereavement and family breakdown — because they had been those children. Their father died of complications from asthma when the twins were six.

"Rainbows became part of our lives at a time when we were trying to make sense of something that, as children, we couldn't really understand," Dawn says. "What I remember most is having that safe space where we could express things in our own way. You didn't necessarily have to know exactly what you were feeling or have the right words."

"It's probably one of the few things we could choose where we didn't need to explain to each other why it mattered," they say together. "We both knew immediately."

Further Than You Think

Cleo's platform is a different one, and it is the most quietly radical thing any of the three said to us.

She is Ms Offaly, and contests the Ms Ireland final on 3 October. She is a business and media lecturer and a course coordinator at a Dublin college. And she left school with fewer than 100 Leaving Certificate points.

Her campaign is called Further Than You Think — Opening Doors. Unlocking Potential. Inspiring Futures. It exists because of what those points did to her at eighteen.

"My Leaving Cert results made me feel like a failure," she says.

That is worth sitting with, because it is a sentence thousands of Irish teenagers say to themselves every August, and almost none of them hear it said back by someone who now runs a course in a Dublin college.

"It is about showing young people that their Leaving Certificate results don't define their intelligence, their ability or what they can achieve in the future," she says. "I left school with fewer than 100 points and, at the time, I felt like my options were extremely limited. Further Education gave me another pathway and, most importantly, gave me the opportunity to build my confidence and discover what I was capable of."

She is sharp on the point that the exam measures one narrow thing well and a great deal else badly. "Not every child can write essays to prove their potential."

And she is sharper still on how Further Education is usually described — as the fallback, the thing you do if the first plan fails.

"Further Education wasn't my consolation prize. It was the door that opened everything else for me."

"A different route does not mean a lesser destination."

Asked what she would say to a teenager opening a disappointing envelope, her answer is the whole campaign in five sentences.

"I'd say give yourself a little bit of time to be disappointed, because you worked hard and it's okay to feel that way. But please don't look at those points and think they're telling you what you're capable of."

"I came out of school with fewer than 100 points, and at the time I genuinely thought my options were gone. They weren't — my route just looked different. Look at Further Education, apprenticeships and all the different pathways available to you. Sometimes the route you didn't plan for can actually turn out to be the one that suits you best."

"Your results are one moment in your life. They're not your future. You might be able to go further than you think."

She now works on the other side of that door, helping students find their own way through it — which is why the campaign is not simply a nice story about herself. It is a professional argument, made by someone who does the job.

Her Ms Ireland fundraising goes to Temple Street Children's Hospital, with a Christmas toy appeal planned. "Christmas can be such a magical time for children," she says, "but for children who are spending it in hospital, it can obviously be a very different experience."

What's next

"The exciting thing is that we don't know exactly where it's going to take us yet," Davinia says. "More fashion, more events, collaborations, travel, sustainability and hopefully working with some amazing Irish designers and brands. We really want it to remain authentic to our family."

Dawn wants the charity work to stay in it: "not just about fashion, but also about creativity, community and giving back."

And then they summarise it themselves, in a line we are not going to improve on:

"Fashion, family, race days, charity and plenty of chaos — basically, Keeping Up with the Knights."

A note on the sourcing

The Knights answered our questions in writing, and every first-person quotation comes from those answers unless stated otherwise. Where a claim could be checked, we checked it: the Galway win and its prize, dress, headpiece and judges; both Curragh Style Icon wins; Dawn's sustainable style win on Irish Oaks weekend; the twins' selection among the twenty Miss Universe Ireland finalists; and Cleo's Ms Offaly title and October final are all corroborated by contemporaneous press reporting.

Some accolades rest on the sisters' own account, with no independent reporting found: the original Punchestown day, Davinia's wins at Limerick, the K Club and the Curragh in 2024, and Cleo's Tullamore Show win in 2023.

Two notes on naming. The award Dawn won in July was reported as a sustainable style award within the Tulfarris-sponsored Styled by Nature competition; the family call it The Sustainable Edit. The Curragh award Davinia won in 2025 is titled Ashford Castle Style Icon rather than Best Dressed. Their Instagram handle is @knightscollective and the profile reads The Knight Collective, which is the form used here; quotations are left exactly as given.