Come Wednesday, the only bash to be at was Marc O'Neill's fashion show at the unusual location of the IFSC car park on Custom House Quay. Marc is one of the rising stars of Irish fashion and is well known for the sense of style he brings to his shows as much as his clothes. While the venue, the Paul Smith lighting, the groovy models (including dancer Jean Butler moonlighting as a clothes horse for the occasion) and of course, the dynamic designs, were all top of the range, the real style here was in the crowd that Marc lured along for the night, aided and abetted by party girls and show organisers, Sonia Reynolds and Emma Kelly.
All the fashion press was there of course, including Deirdre McQuillan who had come straight from her own book launch (see below) and even some who had flown over from London for the occasion. Musicians were well represented too. Rory O'Keefe of The Ultramontanes (also rising stars) was there - they're off to do a tour of 28 venues around England and have been attracting huge attention following a four-out-of-five review from prestigious music mag, Q.
Filmmaker Nicholas O'Neill was just back from the Venice Film Festival, where the film he co-produced, Hooligans (also called Crushproof) was showing. It was a hectic week as, quite apart from the usual round of meetings, Channel 4 was also following director Paul Tickell as he did the rounds, as part of a new film series for the autumn. Dave Morris was also facing a busy autumn as he is production manager on a film called Accelerators which is written by Vinnie Murphy and will start filming soon.
The car park space worked really well as an impromptu fashion venue, particularly when it was full of swish Audi cars (they were sponsoring the event) and bright young things. Emma Elliott of Modus Publicity was over from London taking in Marc's show and a party held by one of her clients, MAC Cosmetics, the next night. Jennifer Keegan was also busy on Thursday night as it was the first screening of her short documentary about the Forty Foot, called Real Men Don't Wear Togs, at the Royal St George Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire. After the show, everyone headed for Life bar on Lower Abbey Street where the party continued. Marc retired quietly, leaving his guests to their own devices as he has a rather busy schedule in the weeks ahead. Next Thursday, he's off to London Fashion Week where he is setting up a salon in the prestigious Metropolitan Hotel. Then it's back to start work on his cousin Rachel O'Neill's wedding dress - she's marrying Isaac Allen, a scion of the Ballymaloe Allens who is in charge of the new restaurant in the schoolhouse in Shanagarry, Co Cork.
Barry's New Hit
If you missed Sebastian Barry's last play, The Steward of Christendom, you were hung for conversation at dinner parties for months, never mind missing out on one of the best Irish plays of the decade. So when his latest, Our Lady of Sligo, opened at the Gate Theatre on Tuesday for two weeks only, people were already queueing out the door so as not to miss it. There was a huge RTE contingent - perhaps closing ranks in the face of TV3's imminent arrival - including the director general Bob Collins and his partner Mary O'Riordan; David Blake-Knox, the head of programming and of course, Gay Byrne and Kathleen Watkins, who are regular supporters of the Gate. The British Council is supporting Our Lady of Sligo on tour so Harold Fish, the director of the Council in Ireland, brought along a party that included Barry Murphy of the OPW, Paddy Duffy from the Taoiseach's office and Michael Ronayne, adviser to Minister for the Arts, Sile de Valera. Howard Kilroy, governor of the Bank of Ireland was there with his wife Meriel Kilroy; they were privately celebrating the birth of their son Simon's new baby. Also there on Tuesday night were the British ambassador, Veronica Sutherland; Sebastian's wife Alison Deegan (Sebastian himself is on a book tour in the US); actress Olwen Fouere, who is in rehearsal for Marina Carr's new play, By the Bog of Cats in the Abbey Theatre; Patricia Quinn, director of the Arts Council; Laura Magahy of Temple Bar Properties, and Tony O'Dalaigh, director of the Dublin Theatre Festival.
Coffee-break
Unless you spent Thursday morning ostrich-like with your head in the sand, it's likely that you attended one of the 20,000 Irish Hospice Foundation coffee mornings. Everywhere from the Mexican embassy to the Attorney General's office people were having coffee and donating the money to the IHF, but the mothership of all the different coffee mornings was at the National Gallery where author Edna O'Brien was hosting the gala coffee morning from 8.30 a.m. Edna is hard at work on another novel and has also written a play, her first since Virginia in the early 1980s, which will be in the hottest theatre in London, the Almeida, next spring. She did Trojan work chatting with the huge collection of IHF supporters that dropped in all morning to wish the charity's chairwoman, Marie Donnelly, well. Ruairi Quinn, leader of the Labour Party, was there early as was Mary O'Rourke TD, while Charlie McCreevy popped along later in the day. Solicitor Clodagh Kean also called in on her way to work accompanied by her young daughter, Kirstin. Filmmaker Katy McGuinness was there, chatting with Kathy Gilfillan; artist Felim Egan talked with art historian, Dorothy Walker; authors Clare Boylan and Deirdre Purcell also had a confab, while Marian Finucane, as always, managed to talk to everyone.
New spin for Charlie?
We've had models-turned-actors, actors-turned-writers and directors-turned-egomaniacs. Even the path from artist to stage designer has been beaten before (a certain Mr R. Ballagh springs to mind). Now it looks like there's another chameleon-turn in the offing - if, that is, the theatrical folk take a bit of initiative. At the opening of Charlie Harper's exhibition at the Hallward Gallery on Tuesday, Gerry Walker, artist and NCAD lecturer, said he felt Charlie could have an unused talent for theatrical design.
Charlie, who is already head of fine art at the Limerick School of Art and Design and a well established painter, replied that he was indeed interested by the idea but that nobody had ever asked him. How's that for a challenge? Unfortunately, there were no thespians there on Tuesday night to take him up on the offer, but there was a fine crew of other friends and supporters who more than made up for that.
Ramping it Up
A huge crowd always turns up for Deryn Mackay when she shows the new season collections for her Blackrock shop Khan, and this year's show, which took place on Tuesday, was no exception. Indeed, given the fact that everyone was so curious about the gigantic new Radisson St Helen's Hotel, the venue chosen by Deryn for the show, and that it was also in aid of ISPCC, it's no surprise that tickets were sold out weeks ago. The ticket said 7.30 p.m. but in truth, that was the time that the free gin bar kicked off and the show didn't start until 8.30 p.m. By that stage the noise level was almost as high as the tan quotient. This was the first big fashion event since the summer and at times it seemed as if there was as much interest taken in the outfits worn by other guests as by the models on the catwalk, elegant as they were. It was a real girls' night out, although the half-dozen men there included designer Michael Mortell, who brought along artist Guggi and his wife Sybillia Rowen and must have jeweller, John Farrington, who provided the jewels on the ramp. The rest of the 400 guests included Kathleen Reynolds, sisters Wendy and Lisa Vard, Joanne Byrne, Maureen Gunne, Cindy Cafolla and Louise O'Loughlin. Designers present, both on the ramp and in person, included Louise Kennedy, Lyn Mar, Mary Gregory and Pat White.
Shopping style
A fair number of Dublin arbiters of style were at the Dublin Bookshop on Wednesday evening - understandably so, as one of the arch influences, Deirdre McQuillan, was celebrating her new book, Dublin Style; An Insider's Guide to Shopping, while another, Robert O'Byrne, of this newspaper, was making the speeches. There were lashings of shop folk including the Brown Thomas crew, Catherine Condell and Clodagh Hannon, who were catching up with a former colleague, Dolores Delaney; Deryn Mackay of Khan; Eddie Shanahan of Arnott's, as well as society florist, Joe Bergin of Booterstown.
Other guests and well-wishers included the oh-so-popular French dressmaker Denise Assas; Maureen Cairnduff; RTE's Brian Walsh, who is moving to Switzerland for the year next week; author Deirdre Purcell who was being congratulated on the success of the TV version of her novel Falling for a Dancer; Town House commissioning editor Marie Heaney, who worked with Deirdre on the book, and her daughter Catherine Ann Heaney of Image magazine.
Fringe fare
No slur on the Dublin Theatre Festival proper, who provided very nice champagne and canapes for their launch a few weeks ago, but it must be said that the Dublin Fringe Festival crew know how to throw a good party. Quite rightly they decided to just throw all the constituent elements - newly-printed programme, free drink, a good DJ and lots of theatre folk - into the POD on Tuesday night and let everyone get on with it. And boy did they get on - the party was still going strong into the small hours. Festival director Ali Curran was looking suitably Svengalian in a sweeping brocade coat and was doing a fine job of looking as if putting together a festival with over 60 shows was easy as pie. Guests were predominantly people connected in some way with the festival. Actress Pauline McLynn was chatting with Arthur Riordan who is writing a piece for Corn Exchange director, Annie Ryan West's festival offering, Car Show. Billed as "fly on the windscreen" theatre, Car Show is a set of four plays to be performed in cars parked in Meeting House Square, with the actors playing to an audience of two in the back seat.
Annie herself was chatting to old friend Morleigh Steinberg - the pair are both involved with bringing over Oguri, a Japanese butoh dancer, from LA. Morleigh, a dancer herself, is designing the lighting for the show, Windscape, and was accompanied to Tuesday night's bash by her partner The Edge and friend, singer Simon Carmody. Actor Phelim Drew and playwright Jimmy Murphy were setting the dance floor alight, accompanied by Deirdre Molloy - Jimmy has written a new piece, Aceldama, for the Fringe set to star Pat Nolan and be directed by Deirdre.
Amongst women
Over the years a healthy number of celebs and stars has gone through the doors of the Gaiety Theatre, but surely nothing like the number that flooded in at the unlikely hour of 11.30 a.m. on Thursday. Irish Tatler magazine is celebrating 100 years of the title (though obviously not all 100 under the management of Smurfit publications) this year, and decided to mark the event with a giant portrait of 100 of Ireland's most influential and inspirational women. A panel of 20 women debated and decided which women had contributed most to Irish society. Then came the task of tracking them down and getting them all in one place at the same time. Editor Morag Prunty described the response as phenomenal and certainly the list is very comprehensive and impressive. From the world of politics there was Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, Mary O'Rourke and Nora Owen; from film and theatre came the one and only Maureen Potter, Oscar-winning stage designer, Josie McAvin, director Garry Hynes and actresses Sinead Cusack, Pauline McLynn and Brenda Fricker, who took a day off filming to be there. Matters artistic were represented by Anne Madden who flew in from Paris for the occasion; the literary world was represented by Jennifer Johnston and Alice Taylor, and music by singers Bernadette Greevy, just back from New Zealand, and world-renowned opera singer Suzanne Murphy, who flew in from Wales.
Wisely, Morag and her team also brought together women who were equally influential if not in the public eye. The first woman bus inspector, Bernie Lyons, was there as was the first female Air Corps pilot, Ann Brogan, the first Aer Lingus air hostess, Grainne Cronin, and the first female Anglican priest, Virginia Kennerly. Dedicated fundraisers such as Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, Adi Roche and Lady Valerie Goulding weren't forgotten, nor were Mairead McGuire, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her peace work in Northern Ireland or Dr Susan McKenna-Lawlor, the world-renowned solar and cosmic physicist. Of course, there were plenty of other influential women who couldn't make it on the day - both Mary Robinson and the President, Mrs MacAleese, sent supportive letters but couldn't make it. So when the portrait is printed in the November issue of IT magazine, you can always say "Well, I was asked but I was just too busy that day . . ."