THEY scrub up well, these journos. Some colleagues don't even recognise each other at the black-tie affair. Who's that over there? A movie mogul maybe? He doesn't work with us, does he? Wow, it's Tony O'Shea, photographer with the Sunday Business Post, which celebrated its 10th birthday this week with a bash at the Shelbourne.
Photographer Kate Horgan does a second take. Where, she asks O'Shea, is the weather-proof gear? Where's the haversack? "It's the second time in my life I hired a dress suit," he says.
As the champagne is uncorked, further fashion exclusives are revealed. "I'm wearing a shrug around my shoulders," Aileen O'Toole, deputy editor and one of the paper's four founding members, tells art director Heather Warwicker.
Malcolm Currie from Glasgow, from the advertising world, is wearing a kilt. Simon Carswell, one of the newest recruits who has worked in the Post newsroom for just four weeks, is here. Mark O'Connell, the longest serving reporter at nine and a half years, is "nearly a lifer".
Another lifer is Damien Kiberd, editor and one of the founders. Yes, there have been "a few" sleepless nights over the 10 years. "Newspapers are the most complicated business in the world - they have to change at every issue, it has to reinvent itself."
The other founding fathers, Frank Fitzgibbon and James Morrissey, are also enjoying the buzz. "It's a great achievement, they've done really, really well," says Fitzgibbon, who left the paper after two years following a disagreement over policy. "That's all in the past," he says. "Life's too short." Morrissey, from Kiltimagh, Co Mayo, sold his shares in 1992 - "I didn't make as much as the others," he says with a wide grin.