Habitat celebrated its 40th birthday with a star-studded party in London. Eoin Lyons worked the room.
London, June 9th, 7.30 p.m. We're at the Met Bar with Malcolm Brighton, who owns the Habitat franchise in Ireland, and the company's Irish public relations representative, Emma Kelly. It's 40 years since Terence Conran opened the first Habitat store, and tonight there is a party to launch a line of products designed by a varied bunch of celebrities, many of whom are designers, such as Issey Miyake and Manolo Blahnik. The Met Bar, by the way - once the coolest place in town - is now one of the dullest bars in London.
8 p.m. Walk a few minutes from Park Lane to the In & Out Club in Piccadilly, a grand building facing Green Park. Sir Terence and his Irish wife Victoria Davis arrive as we do. He looks younger than his seventy-odd years.
8.10 p.m. Inside is a series of ornate rooms around a leafy courtyard. It's very crowded, but we spot Paul Smith (still cool), Jasper Conran (very orange) and Sienna Miller (without Jude Law). An extended version of the best-selling light fixture called "Garland Light", a wispy concoction of leaves and flowers, hangs in the stairwell.
8.15 p.m. After glasses of champagne, it's through to see the new products, displayed in a darkened room alongside gigantic photographs of the various designers. The products will be available in Habitat stores from September. Many of the items relate to what the celebrity is famous for, and these often work best. So there's athlete Linford Christie's system of stackable, timber shoe boxes with a handy glass front; the electro-music band Daft Punk's coffee table with a pattern of flashing square red lights that was inspired by the dance floor in Saturday Night Fever; singer Sharleen Spiteri's modular CD rack; and dancer Joaquín Cortés's freestanding mirror. Surprisingly, Cortés's mirror is the most desirable of the lot. It's a simple mirrored box, about seven feet tall and one foot deep. It will sell for €545. Get your order in now.
Of the fashion designers, Issey Miyake's natural linen placemats with tiny pockets to hold cutlery, and Manolo Blahnik's shoehorn in the shape of a stiletto, have the most appeal. Philip Treacy's orange chair is fine, Paul Smith's clothes hangers are cute, although there's a sense of "so what" about a hanger with a fluorescent band. But none of these things will let you down. They can be bought safe in the knowledge that no-one's going to laugh at your hideous taste.
We also liked model turned singer/songwriter Carla Bruni's hippy-ish woven hanging chair in aubergine, Kristin Scott Thomas's red travel "bureau", Deepak Chopra's yoga mat, and Helena Christensen's metal flower lights at the end of long, twistable wire stems.
9.30 p.m. The party swings along. In general, partygoers in London are far less dressed up than in Dublin. Also noticeable is the number of cool older women. One, who must be in her sixties, wears a beaded 1940s hat with a tight, green, roll-neck sweater, and is smoking a roll-up cigarette. Mary Quant arrives. She still has the angular bob and the black striped T-shirt, rare proof that if a look works when you're young, it's not inconceivable that it will work later in life, too.
10 p.m. We park ourselves beside the most delicious Parma ham we've ever tasted. Little chocolate-covered sorbets pass by on cocktail sticks. Classy.
10.30 p.m. A mini Irish contingent arrives, consisting of Jasmine Guinness, Philip Treacy and Alannah Weston. We overhear that Alannah will head up the new "super-brands" department in Selfridges, the department store owned by her father, Galen Weston. Also there is Carmel McElroy from Enniskillen, who recently graduated from the RCA and has just sold a design for an aluminium stool to Ikea. It will go into production later this year, and now she's working on textiles for Treacy.
11.30 p.m. Someone bumps into one of the Joaquín Cortés mirrors and because they're all side-by-side, this creates a domino effect and they all collapse in a noisy mess of broken glass.
Midnight Hard-core party animals we are not. Back to The Met and bed.
Habitat is at 6-7 St Stephen's Green, Dublin. New stores will open in Belfast and Galway later this year