Buck up Ireland, before we turn into recession drones with nothing to say should we ever get invited for drinks again, writes ORNA MULCAHY
WHEN VOGUEspeaks, a girl has to listen, but sometimes it's hard to keep believing. Vogue invariably knows what the Next Big Thing will be, even if it seems strange and out of kilter with reality, but to be told in the September issue out now that extravagant dinner dresses are going to be big this season, well, all one can say is, maybe in St Petersburg but not in Dublin.
The mantelpiece is conspicuously lacking in cardboard for autumn/winter ’09.
There are no coy “save the date” cards hinting at fabulous revelries to come. Right now, no one I know is planning to be “At Home”, though there are some vicarious thrills in the pipeline as friends have been invited to a couple of lavish 50th birthday parties that are deliberately being held off the island in less depressed locations.
For me, there isn’t a hint of an occasion that would warrant the “opulent brocade, beautiful embellishment and surface grandeur” recommended by the high priestesses of Hanover Square where Vogue has its HQ. “Consider it a ready-made heirloom,” they trumpet, below a picture of a £20,100 dress covered in little round mirrors that is Dolce Gabbana channelling Shree. But, for goodness sake, “wear it with nonchalance”, the caption continues.
In Vogue'sview, that means flinging yourself on an antique armchair, and letting your head loll, corpse like, to one side while staring vacantly into the middle distance and flaring your nostrils. It's quite a difficult look. Alternatively, you could "decorate yourself in Prada's intense blood-red flocked velvet" (the drawingroom curtains?) and hop up on the back of the dining chair, balancing a hideous six-inch studded leather shoe on the dining table, and exposing your crotch to the guests. The theme is a wild party that has gotten out of hand, with all the furniture upended and pictures fallen from the walls, horribly in tune with our own busted economy, except now we can't afford to throw the party.
It won’t catch on in Balivor, as a colleague used to say about any new trend, or even in Ballsbridge, where residents are too fed up with their dwindling assets to entertain on a grand scale. The chandeliers have been dimmed in Dublin 4. Interconnecting reception rooms are no longer being thrown open to 80 friends for drinks, or 50 for a sit-down supper. Having the caterers in is out.
Early on in this debacle, when the economy was eagerly reported to be in freefall, couples were throwing defiant little recession parties with cheap eats and interesting wines, but that devil-may-care attitude is shifting as the country settles down to being poor and downtrodden all over again.
After a full 12 months of dire news the formerly wealthy are battle-weary, and now it’s all about knowing who your true friends are rather than putting on a show. Your true friend being someone who will listen when you are slumped down low in the French gilt chair, staring, broken doll-like, into the distance, and saying, “If only . . .” or, “I thought I had it made!”
What an interesting time for Dermot Bolger to be writing a novel that, according to his contract with his patron Dún Laoghaire- Rathdown Co Council, has to be set in salubrious Blackrock. A rich seam, you would think. The neighbourhood must be bristling with novel plots being played out over kitchen suppers where one or all parties have “taken a haircut”, to use one of the horrible new expressions that are doing the rounds.
We need Dermot, or someone, to extract poetry from this downturn. Our rich and expressive language is being daily reduced to a lazy lexicon of soundbites and cliche.
I’m tired of hearing perfectly well-educated people tell me that all bets are off, and so are the gloves; that Nama is the only game in town; that it’s now the survival of the fittest; that our children’s children will be paying for this, and that we ain’t seen nothing yet. Buck up, Ireland, before we turn into a nation of recession drones with nothing interesting or witty to say for ourselves should we ever get invited to a drinks party again.
Finally, as parents get down to the business of seeing their children through the CAO mill, the annual debate on whether the 500-plus points brigade should be herded into Medicine gets aired. Emphatically, No! says one doctor, now earning a packet outside Ireland, but loathing his job at the same time.
He has been contacting friends and relatives, urging them to allow their children to follow their natural talents rather than shoe-horn them into a profession they might grow to hate. He has even made up a rap song to illustrate how being a doctor has ruined his life. I won’t publish it in full here, but the chorus goes “It’s not the booze and the fags that are killing me . . . It’s the goddam Ophthalmology . . .”
Pushy parents take note. Let them do Arts or Architecture if that’s what they want. Or fashion design. We’ll need some fabulous frocks when Ireland takes off again.