SMALL PRINT:"I THINK Bar Rafaeli's amazing. Really – I think she's unbelievable." It's fashionable chat, but the speaker can't have passed her 18th birthday; how she knows the name of Rafaeli, not to mention the hundreds more she lists off in the following 10 minutes, is beyond me.
Kids – they grow up so fast.
They’re not out of place, though, in the old Waterstone’s building on Dawson Street last Saturday, in attendance for Helen O’Reilly’s talk, “How to walk in high heels”, as part of the Dublin Fashion Festival.
In true Irish fashion, we are informed, five minutes after the talk is due to start, that O’Reilly won’t be making it. “We’re terribly sorry – instead, Sonya Lennon is going to talk to you about high heels and, um, whatever you want her to talk about.”
Lennon – who must be one of the Irish fashion world’s most capable multi-taskers – is ushered in with no great fanfare, seated on the stage and handed a microphone. From this lofty perch she delivers a 15-minute talk on her “fashion philosophy”, or, rather, how to wear clothes and not look bad in the process.
“You wouldn’t decorate a room without a plan,” says Lennon. “It should be that way with your wardrobe.”
This is sound logic; I take note of the items in my wardrobe that seriously mess up its feng shui, and determine not to buy a second pair of my favourite Buffalo boots.
She then moves on to that fashion stalwart; your “problem area”.
“Take note of the bits you don’t like so much,” she says.
We could be here a while.
“Then think about what you want to highlight, and what you want to conceal. And really, you can either change it, or get on with it and love yourself the way you are.”
There is a collective pause while we await the opening strains of Christina Aguilera’s Beautiful – instead, it’s enough with the talk and more with the walk, as Ireland’s top models come out to show us autumn/winter’s strongest trends from the city centre’s participating stores (more than 100, we’re told).
The catwalk show is nice, if uninspiring – there are no shades of Christopher Bailey brilliance – but it’s entertaining and, crucially, accessible, as the youngsters whispering about Bar Rafaeli will attest.
Dublin Fashion Festival, which opened last Thursday and closed last night, didn’t break any new ground or expose us to stores or designers we didn’t already know about – although the Irish designer collection in Brown Thomas and Project 51 are doing an excellent job of that – but it did, for one weekend only, bring fashion shows, models and insights to the masses; masses for whom fashion, until now, may have been confined to the pages of their favourite glossy magazines.
Despite all that, we still, tragically, have no idea how to walk in high heels – we’ll just have to wait until next year.
– ROSEMARY Mac CABE
Leafing through pages from the past
IF YOU’RE hankering for a time when magazines were something you ordered and waited patiently for the postman to bring, and which you leafed through with calm excitement, then an Irish blog bringing back that sensation is definitely worth a look.
Brand New Retro (brandnewretro.wordpress.com) takes readers back in time to magazines from the 1960s to early 1990s. The “scans from the past” are the bounty of a treasure trove from Dundalk man Brian McMahon, who blogs as “Dougie Devlin” .
After looking for photographs of his deceased father this year, McMahon unearthed reams of old newspapers, magazines, photos from the Dundalk music scene, fanzines and more, which he has been methodically sifting through and scanning for publication on his blog.
Most of the material, such as the latest Miss Magazine"One Mod Day In Dublin" fashion shoot from 1966, above, has become available online for the first time.
Another recent upload brings us back to Man Alivemagazine in 1975, featuring the then latest short story by John McGahern and an interview with runner Eamonn Coughlan.
Old product advertisements, comic strips, street style features from the 1980s – reinforcing the fact that that particular brand of fashion journalism isn’t a new phenomenon – gig reviews, nightclub advertisements for anyone who socialised at Dublin nightclubs Club Cleo in Zhivago on Baggot Street or Revolution Night Club on Rutland Place, along with cuttings and tunes from bands McMahon was involved in, create a veritable online time warp to get lost in for a few hours.
If you’re going to have a look at it, be prepared to set aside a chunk of reading time to delve into old Eamon Dunphy interviews, and deciphering the typeface and handwritten articles in zines.
Retro has never seemed so interesting.
– UNA MULLALLY
Festival fever hits Co Cork
IT’S CORK’S turn to bombard punters with festivals this week, as a trio of events take over the Rebel County, featuring food, stories and tunes in that order.
First up is A Taste of West Cork, which runs until Sunday. Now in its eighth year, the festival features apple tasting at Gortnacloghy, seaweed tasting, a schools cookery competition, a Celtic Cook-Off at the West Cork Hotel. There will also be a series of culinary events showcasing food from further afield, including sushi-preparing workshops, Sri Lankan cookery events, Japanese lunches, New Zealand and Australian food showcases and more.
atasteofwestcork.com
Cork's International Short Story Festivalruns from Wednesday to Sunday at venues in Cork city centre. Readings by Peter Murphy, Colm Tóibín and more, plus public interviews, the Frank O'Connor Literary Walking Tour, and short-story writing workshops make up the bulk of a meaty programme.
corkshortstory.net
Over in Clonakilty, the International Guitar Festivalruns from Thursday to Sunday. The line-up features acts such as We Cut Corners, Roy Harper, Honkeyfinger, and the West Cork Ukelele Orchestra, a songwriting workshop with John Spillane and a free seminar with George Lowden.
The free Session Trail in bars and on the streets also promises “trad sessions, folk sessions, blues wigouts, rock fests, rock-a-billy, dirty delta punk, plus the largest guitar band ever assembled in the world”.
clonguitarfest.com
– UNA MULLALLY
