Trade NamesAfter over 60 years, C O'Donnell is still putting a bit of style in the step of its loyal band of customers, writes Rose Doyle

Anyone lucky enough to find themselves in Limerick city's Catherine Street on November 10th-11th might have worried that time and the tide of events had taken a backwards leap. Back to 1946, in fact, at least in the matter of fashion and shopping at number 11 on that street.

It was all in a good cause and all by way of celebrating the 60 years C O'Donnell, Ladies Fashion Boutique, has been in business there.

Invitations to the event, in 3,400 formal letters, were sent weeks in advance. Customers were invited for "afternoon tea and refreshments" at a celebration in the style of November 1946 when Christy O'Donnell opened the doors of his post-war fashion house, offering exclusive style to the ladies of Limerick and beyond. Clothing to fit the time was worn and champagne, an essential element in post-war tea parties apparently, imbibed.

There was plenty to celebrate. C O'Donnell has seen fashions come and go, been a gauge of the seismic cultural changes which ushered the second part of the 20th century into the new millennium. "He sold household things at first, sheets, blankets, general drapery," says Ann O'Donnell of her father Christy, the man who started it all in 1946. "Then he saw there was a demand for clothing. This was just post-war and people had been deprived of nice things, of all sorts of commodities, for so long.

"Coupons were still in use plus a lot of people would buy and pay things off week-by-week. Messenger boys used to deliver on bikes with baskets at the front, the clothes wrapped in brown paper and twine. My father would often have to cycle out, too, to collect payment. The shop became well known very quickly: it was very badly needed!"

Ann O'Donnell runs today's boutique with her daughter Elaine Clogan, the third generation to become involved. Together they tell the story of a fashion boutique which became a landmark.

Ann fills in the background, giving a flavour of the economic mood of the late 1930s and early 1940s.

"My father grew up in a pub in Rathkeale. There were about 14-to-15 pubs in the town - too many! - so they closed and the family moved to an outside farm nearby. My father went to Skerries College in Dublin and did general economics and accounting. He was to go for a job in the bank but in those days you had to be nominated. He didn't wait around, got a job in Crannocks department store instead where he became the youngest charge-hand in Ireland. He met my mother, Eileen, in Crannocks and when the manager's job didn't come to him he decided to do something for himself."

Christy and Eileen O'Donnell opened first in a rented premises at Thomas Street, Limerick. They'd started selling fashion by the time the new look arrived in the late 1940s.

"They got in as many clothes in the style as they could; anyone who wanted an outfit bought it," Ann says. "They were in a basement in Thomas Street which, like all the shops then, was very basic. Wouldn't do anything to enhance your merchandising eye! There was tiling and lino on the floor, a glass counter with gloves underneath and with paper and twine on top. There was black, shining vitrolite on pillars outside the shop. When a vacant site came up here, which was close by, we bought it and custom built this shop."

That was in 1991, by which time a lot of water had flowed under the bridge of Christy O'Donnell's fashion shop. Ann O'Donnell, for one thing, had come into the business in 1976.

"I'd never wanted to," she admits, "but I'd grown up with it and learned an awful lot without realising it. I was an only child, had been at boarding school and was in France at the Alliance Français; I wanted to be an interpreter when my mother became ill and I had to come home."

Life and the business conspired to bring her on board. Her mother died in 1970, Ann worked in Dublin, then Limerick, then got married. It was when her father decided to sell the business, but "wasn't getting the money he wanted" that she decided to rent it herself and take over - for a year to begin with. Thirty years later she can't imagine doing anything else.

"Christy walked out the door and I walked in," she remembers. "He'd a seamstress working for him, a great woman called Lil O'Rourke who could remake things. She stayed to show me the ropes and then I took on others. We began to buy in more, from France and Germany, names like Mondi, Bruestle, Strenesse. We settled into a nice steady business."

Elaine was seven years old when her grandfather, Christy O'Donnell, died in 1986. "I've very, very strong memories of him," she says. "He was a very, very trendy dresser. I was brought into the shop when I was only a day out of hospital. The shop was always very family orientated. Mum and all the women who worked in the shop were always close."

Elaine has three siblings: Barry (29), Gillian (25) and John (20). She's the only one, so far, to go into the business; though Gillian spent a year in Catherine Street while doing entrepreneurial management in UL and might, in time, work there again.

"We've customers who come down on the train from Dublin," Elaine says, "three women who then go back on the early train. We've a great number of other customers who're not from Limerick. People are always saying things like 'my grandmother used shop here'."

She always knew, she says, that she'd "end up in retail. I loved clothes, even as a kid! Mum never pushed it, however."

Like her mother, she took a roundabout route to Catherine Street, doing management training with fashion retailer Mango in Dublin, with Arnotts in Dublin and Cork, working for Lee and Wrangler "designing their windows around the country. Such good experience, going into the big shops and doing their windows and listening!"

The Catherine Street shop has just over 93sq m (1,000sq ft) of space, on one floor, a "not impersonal, nice size", says Elaine. "We cater to the dressy dressers, mid to upper-end - and we sell jeans. Right across the board from 21 to 100-year-olds. It seems to work for us.

"We've brands from all over; designer Isabel de Pedro is a huge seller for us. We sell Evanlinka, which is Greek, and Airfield, which is German, the Remix designer collection and Legatte."

Ann allows herself a nostalgically fond look at the decades past. "Fashions began to slowly change in the 1950s," she reminds, "and in the 1960s Mary Quant and mini skirts became the thing. The flower power era of tunics and wide trousers came in the late 1960s and midi and maxi coats in the early 1970s, as well as fun furs and fox furs and hot pants.

"The 1980s brought power dressing and padded shoulders, fashions not seen before. People really went for it. The 1990s brought velvet, lace and ski-pants, along with long, beaded dresses. Oh, and Donna Karan body suits."

Some fads endure. Shoulder pads, for instance, of which Ann is a great fan. "They slim the waist, lift clothes so that they hang better, slim down dramatically in fact. We sell them all the time."

Mother and daughter buy for the shop together "at all the usual fairs" Elaine says. "Pret a Porter in Paris, Pure in London and in Dublin. We always pick somewhere like Milan to go to keep abreast of change and trends. We're talking now about going to Australia."

C O'Donnell gives employment to eight people, including Ann and Elaine.

She believes firmly that, "what will happen will happen", and is happily confident about the future of the business and about her own future, whatever it may bring.