The Little Black Book

You find them, these forgotten country towns, more by accident than design. It is as if they had fallen off maps, places for passing through rather than going to. Frozen in time, draped in a patina of grey stone and flaking paint, their grimy windows blind any sign of life. Abandoned in times of austerity […]

It was useful to delay writing in order to process the complexities of the extraordinary experience that Irish fashion designer Helen Cody created at Christ Church Cathedral on Tuesday 6th. September. When she first told me that she had secured the venue I knew she intended something special and that somehow she would make light […]

  The ‘season’ is upon us. In Ireland that means regular horse racing, a rare polo match, the odd ‘celebrity’ wedding and one day in five when it does not rain… heavily. It is time for a style statement. The trouble is in many will insist on wearing an entire ‘book’ . Easy elegance is […]

There are old folk medicines, pills for sleeping, tinctures for toothache, liniments for muscle strain, epidurals for birthing, tonics for tiredness, lotions for sunburn, elixirs for youthfulness….and sights for sore eyes. I found this one lying silent, poetic and misty on a back road from Sligo to Dromahair.

The Cannes Film Festival produced a flurry of reviews, headlines and dramas in various measures again this year. One film, Neon Demon starring Elle Fanning, is described as portraying a dystopian fashion industry full of psychotic models. In the realms of fantasy storytelling and movie industry commerce such a narrative is likely to draw big […]

  Cold January mornings rarely reward curiosity unless there is snow. The outside cold and inside warmth have come to a détente and the mist has cleared from the windows. The patina of light shifts between silver and slate. It is a dull day. As I sit sideways on to the window something registers out […]

  It is Sunday. It is one of those winter mornings when sleet scratches our faces and rasping air tears the lining of our throats. There is little shelter and no comfort on the high bank overlooking the GAA pitch in north County Dublin. A mixture of hope and expectation, a sense of family and […]

  It took a while to develop an easy familiarity with Paris, with its neighbourhoods and the short cuts that create a sense of comfort, even belonging. In time my interest and work in fashion took me took around the city to the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, the Palais de Tokyo, l’ Ecole […]

  The mists swirl smearing the car widow, flinging icy drops of moisture over the edge of every contour. I am on the deserted road that drags itself across the Knockmealdown mountains between the villages of Clogheen and Lismore. Suddenly the spectre of tumbling walls strobes softly through the dreary grey light. A ghostly pile […]

A wide meandering path runs through alpine summer meadows at Monte Baldo, 1760 metres up in the Alps above Lake Garda. The barely noticable hiker in the picture gives some idea the scale of the area. On a summer’s day the temperature could be 18 degrees, whereas at the lakeside below it might tipping 40. […]