FASHION: Grainne Brookfield likes to dress up, she tells Deirdre McQuillan.
Grainne Brookfield is a 25-year-old Dublin singer whose twin passions are music and fashion. Due to launch her first album of jazz favourites at the end of this month (called Close Your Eyes), she comes from a musical family; her grandmother was a Feis Ceoil winner, her mother Kate is an accordion player and her brother Gareth Nugent is a singer in London with the rock band Rockzilla. Trained at the RIA and the College of Music, she was introduced to jazz by her husband, the guitarist Mike Brookfield.
A stage performer since the age of 15 when she first appeared in the Clontarf Castle Cabaret, Brookfield's a big girl with a big voice and a personality as bubbly and as effervescent as champagne. At 5'l0" and a size 18, she started developing weight problems as a teenager and having been diagnosed as suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome, went from a size 10 to 22. "I never really noticed the weight gain because of the bastard who invented the elastic waistband, but it got really bad last year," she says.
From a glamorous teenager who wouldn't have been seen dead in tracksuit bottoms, she suddenly lost interest. "I was denying myself," she says.
Efforts to lose weight proved fruitless until she finally found a dietician in Stillorgan, Eva Orsmond, who put her on a low glycaemia index diet, a similar regime to that of a diabetic and since April, she has lost two stone, cutting out refined starchy foods such as plates of pasta, and eating more vegetables. It has given her renewed confidence and reawakened her interest in stylish clothes. "I am back in the shops," she smiles.
Her favourite place when it comes to shopping is Long Tall Sally in Clerys - "they go up to size 22 and I get both the length and the width." Per Una in Marks & Spencers is good for casual clothes, Next is "super" for long clothes and stylist Catherine Condell introduced her to the clean-cut lines of Sarah Pacini, in Brown Thomas.
T-shirts are the bane of her life, and she complains that even M&S don't make them long enough, but again, Long Tall Sally comes up trumps here, along with the kind of jeans she likes to wear. "I am a big girl, I know that, but you have to maximise what you have got. If you wear the baggy jumper, you are going to be as slim as your widest point. I think big women should make the most of their shape, no belts, but clean lines and show a little cleavage in a tasteful way. It's very important not to go the baggy clothes route and every woman should have a well-tailored jacket."
She loathes belly tops, scratchy fabrics and wide thongs. For underwear, she recommends Pauline in Intimate Lingerie on Dublin's Tara Street.
Grainne leads a dual life - by day she is manager of the outpatients department of the Rotunda - so her clothes have to accommodate very different demands. She buys machine-washable suits from Next for work, and for blouses or shirts, she likes Marks & Spencer, particularly the new Limited Edition range.
Like many women, she is passionate about shoes, and haunts Brown Thomas and Dune in Roches Stores, where there are bags to match. Pride of place in her shoe collection is a pair of Jimmy Choos, denim with tiny studs, round toes and a wooden heel that cost €400. But does she adore them? Does she what! Don't get her started on the subject of bags and the adored brown and black Gucci stolen in a burglary last summer. "I left it open on the table for them." Now she relies on a casual pink canvas Kipling bought in Arnotts.
She plays with two groups, a quintet and an eight-piece swing band called Holly and the Go-Lights at the Sugar Club in Leeson Street once a month. She has sung at weddings and at Christmas parties, notably at Áras an Uachtaráin for President McAleese's family and friends.
For her jazz performances, she prefers to wear pinstripe suits. "It's that kind of music, but for the swing band the clothes will be more frivolous. I have a red tuxedo for a run of Christmas shows at the Hilton made by Tomas Heverin, who used to work for de Stafford and for Bronte Bridal, but is now out on his own. He makes a lot of my clothes for shows and I rely on him a lot. He made my wedding dress three years ago, winter white satin overlaid with lace and duchesse silk."
Bigger women can find shops a nightmare, she says. "In some I can get into a size l6 and in others not. There are so many women like me. I like Diffusion in Clontarf, because they will get things in your size if they don't have them. All the designers in Debenhams are doing up to size 22 and 24."
A self-confessed "girly girl", she loves jewellery from Monsoon and the stalls in the Jervis Street Centre. When we meet she is wearing a sequinned butterfly around her neck and a silver John Rocha charm bracelet, a present from her husband, from Paul Sheerin jewellers.
The worst fashion mistake she ever made, she says, was to have her long, glossy black hair permed. "I looked like a Christmas tree, it was a tight, Winnie Mandela look. Never again." Now she relies on Michael Doyle in Peter Marks's Stephen's Green salon to keep her tresses in good shape.
For make-up she likes to stress her pale skin rather than hide it, emphasising healthy pink cheeks, but for performances she uses yellow-based Mac foundation. She can't live without Laura Mercier skin creams, Bobbie Brown tea rose tint lipstick and every one of her coat pockets is furnished with a Nivea care gloss and shine tube.
For the launch of the album, which she wants to be a "landmark" in her career, she has still not decided on what to wear, but is toying with the idea of something green, a colour she loves. But whatever she wears will have to suit, because "fashion is fashion when it suits you. If an outfit doesn't suit you, then it's not fashion."