Sybil Connolly: In Detail
Details of Sybil Connolly dress which I took at the Sybil Connolly installation as part Brown Thomas CREATE this September. Dresses courtesy of The Hunt Museum.
In July I went a talk about Sybil Connolly in The Little Museum of Dublin by Robert O’Byrne, author of many brilliant books on fine and decorative arts and Vice-President of The Irish Georgian Society. His talk was fascinating, insightful, funny and engaging and made me think even more about Sybil Connolly’s life and work.
What’s interesting about Sybil Connolly is as Ireland’s first fashion designer she boldly went where no other had gone before, she wasn’t afraid of being Irish, in fact, she saw that being Irish is what made her distinctive as a designer. Very few people, even today, have achieved what she achieved. She showed it is possible to be both Irish and international and she could do this as an independent woman in the very difficult period that was 1950s Ireland. There is something to her spirit, courage and business acumen that I find inspiring.
While I studied Sybil in university and know of her work, very little is known or recorded of her personal life or her body of work. Robert O’Byrne has written about her work in many of his excellent books and also has had the privilege of knowing Sybil Connolly personally. He had tea with her in her fine linen-draped drawing rooms in Merrion Square and met the milk-skinned charmer first hand. I met Robert O’Byrne for a coffee to find out more…
RR: Tell me about your first meeting with Sybil?
R’OB: It must have been the late eighties, she was still working in those days and had her premises in 71 Merrion Square and she was still very active as a designer. She was the Grand Dame of Dublin and when people of substance came to town they all went to see her. If you were a figure of consequence you would call and see Sybil. It was like going to see the President.
RR: What was your first impression of her?
R’OB: She was very gracious, very warm yet there was a certain remove. She didn’t become a best friend instantly. Familiar wasn’t her style. Her style was to be poised, controlled and from my point of view there was never anything casual- there was a certain formality, but she came from a period where that would be important and she didn’t change. She was to some extent belonging to another era.
RR: She began her career in London working as a couturier and then with fashion visionary Jack Clarke in Dublin tell me more about this period?
R’OB: She trained in London and returned to Dublin at the outbreak of WW11. She began working with Jack Clarke in his store Richard Alan on Grafton Street. Clarke was certainly the most dynamic person in the fashion industry in Ireland at that time. Because of the War Ireland was cut off so it was actually a very good time for her because it meant Ireland was self-sufficient and it meant that people who bought clothes couldn’t go elsewhere, they had to buy in Ireland. She built up a bigger client base firstly in Jack Clarke because of the War as the people who normally have gone to London or Paris were then not able to do so. This was how Jack Clarke’s business and later her business was able to grow.
RR: Tell me more about the women who were her clientele?
R’OB: They were of a similar sort, her core clients were East Coast (America) well-bred wives of rich husbands from the DuPonts to Jackie Kennedy and a certain number of Hollywood women like Rosalind Russell of The Women.
RR: Did she ever create costume for Hollywood?
R’OB: She did costume for a Rosalind Russell film The Trouble with Angels in 1966. Sybil visited Hollywood a lot and 1950s magazines like Variety Magazine would report of her appearances at Hollywood Parties. She knew all the right people to cultivate.
RR: Tell me more about the House that Linen Built, 71 Merrion Square?
R’OB: The ground floor housed her fitting rooms and so forth. The first floor were her reception rooms and were beautiful. The drawing room in particular was lined in pleated linen. This is where Sybil would have put on her shows and where people had tea with her and it was very much gracious living. What was interesting about that when I knew the house the pleated linen on the walls were to me a pale cafe au lait colour but when the house was emptied we discovered that the linen room started out as lilac, this was the colour she chose in 1957 when she moved in. Above that were her own living quarters. And the work-rooms were downstairs and extended out the back. At her height she had up to 100 people working for her in these rooms.
RR: There was a mews house also?
R’OB: Yes, there was a mews house at the back of Sybil’s house. American PR lady Eleanor Lambert used to come to Dublin and stay there, it was Sybil’s guest house of sorts. The mews was very pretty it had a charming garden. The mews was accessible from a lane, which meant guest’s had privacy and could come and go without having to come through the main house.
RR: Gracious living also extended to a Butler?
R’OB: Yes she had a Butler named James. He was very discreet and very much an old fashioned Butler and would never disclose any information about Sybil.
RR: Sybil’s designs worked a particular brand of Irish romantic which still has appeal?
R’OB: Yes, Sybil’s work was a sort of collage. For example in 1954 she did a collection where the skirts had beautiful patterns taken from the plasterwork ceilings of Merrion Square houses. The dresses had applique and embroidery. The romance she cultivated stemmed from that idea of gracious Irish living in the Big House. She also channeled Lady Lavery as Cathleen ni Houlihan, Playing in a slightly Marie Antoinette way the idea of the peasant woman. A striking figure in a shawl with an Irish wolfhound. It was peasant chic before it was invented. She made Irish ethic garments like the red petticoat and shawl a smart and luxurious look for the rich ladies. There were the two contradicting looks in the 1950s from Jacques Fath’s slim silhouette to Christian Dior’s New Look (the name of which interestingly was coined by the Irish woman Carmel Snow) Sybil did both of these looks from sharp suits to romantic dresses in Irish fabrics.
RR: Her look was very much coveted?
RO’B: Yes, her clothing was couture which only select ladies could have but she did produce Vogue patterns for the mass market so women of the time could reproduce her look. This was indicative of how famous she was that she had designs reproduced in Vogue patterns, you wouldn’t have had a designer who wasn’t well known producing patterns, it had to be someone everybody knew because they wanted to sell en msse.
RR: Tell me about her later design work?
R’OB: In the eighties her client list diminished. She started on other projects working with Tiffany’s designing homewares. The homeware designer at Tiffany’s was a good friend who would stay in the mews house in Merrion Square. Through him she got a lot of commissions for Tiffany she created designs for beautiful tableware inspired by Mrs Delany’s prints.
RR: What do you think was her most outstanding dress?
R’OB: The dress called First Love, if she had a signature look, this was truly hers. She continued to make these dresses right up to the end. There was still a demand for this style. The pleated linen dresses are still enduring today and the gowns made in the 1950s still look great.
RR: Her designs were romantic gowns and costumes but what was her own personal style like?
R’OB: When I knew her she used to wear very simple shift dresses cut just beneath the knee. She always dressed very simply and she always wore pearls. Her hair at that time had a bluey-mauvish tint . She had magnificent skin and a beautiful speaking voice, it was like a purr, she had a faint Irish lilt and she he knew she had a seductive voice.
RR: The Sybil story is quite remarkable for a number of reasons, but the most interesting aspect of her success is that she achieved what she did as a woman in the 1950s?
R’OB: Sybil presented as very gracious veneer but she was tough underneath. She was the most successful Irish business woman of the 1950s. People have a negative attitude towards the 1950s, quite rightly, yet there were success stories and Sybil was one of them. She was the best ambassador Ireland ever had, she presented a modern image of Ireland by portraying a positive story all the time. She employed many people and encouraged dignitaries and Hollywood stars to visit and to look positively on our traditions and design heritage.
RR: What do you think was the secret to her success?
R’OB: Her success could be attributed to many things, most particularly her age. She was in her thirties before she gained recognition. She had been working away quietly in the back ground. You could describe her as a sleeping beauty, dormant with this talent for so long until suddenly she woke up. There was a sequence of events which led to her success she went to the USA, she met Carmel Snow (Editor of Harper’s Bazaar) and the War came, circumstance played a huge part as well as luck. If she had started her business in 1939 -1940 would she have been as successful? Who knows, it took till the 1950s for her to have her own business. Irene Gilbert was first and then Sybil, she came and placed Irish fashion firmly unto the international stage.
See Robert O’Bryne’s wonderful blog here The Irish Aesthete
Follow him on Twitter here @irishaesthete
A you-tube video of Sybil from 1957
A lovely article from The Irish Times this year where Anna Clarke (Jack Clarke’s great-grandaughter wore her grandmother’s Sybil Connolly wedding dress First Love)
Details of Sybil Connolly dress which I took at the Sybil Connolly installation as part Brown Thomas CREATE this September. Dresses courtesy of The Hunt Museum.