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PHOTOS Successful Conversation with Designers event helps preserve Sybil Connolly’s archive

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Conversation with Designers event – Pictured are Edmund Shanahan, Chairperson Council of Irish Fashion Designers, Celia Holman Lee and Jill Cousins, CEO Hunt Museum pictured with pieces of Sybil’s clothing. Picture: Olena Oleksienko/ilovelimerick

Conversation with Designers event at the Hunt Museum raised funds for the restoration and preservation of the Sybil Connolly Archive at the museum

‘Conversation with Designers’ took place at the the Hunt Museum to raise additional funds for the restoration and preservation of the Sybil Connolly Archive at the museum. Picture: Olena Oleksienko/ilovelimerick

The Council of Irish Fashion Designers in association with the Hunt Museum and Anthology Magazine hosted the Conversation with Designers event at the Hunt Museum Gallery on Thursday, May 11, 2023 to raise additional funds for the restoration and preservation of the Sybil Connolly Archive at the museum.

The highly successful Conversation with Designers event saw Irish fashion designers Amy Anderson (Kindred of Ireland), Helen Hayes, Hazel Green, Carolyn O’Sullivan (Not Another White Dress) and Anthology editor Edel Cassidy in conversation with Eddie Shanahan on matters of design, craftsmanship, the business of fashion and the legacy of Ireland’s legendary designer Sybil Connolly.

Jill Cousins, CEO of the Hunt Museum explained the museum got involved wit the event because the Sybil Connolly collection is one their of three collections, saying, “As you know, Sybil Connolly was a fashion designer of the 1950s, and we have probably the biggest of her haute couture collection here.”


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Speaking about the work which is needed for the collection, the Hunt Museum CEO said, “We’re talking 70 year ago when she started doing it, which means there is wear-and-tear anyway on them. So quite a lot of them need a professional conservator, that costs something in the region of €25,000 for 13 garments.

“We managed to raise through Stitch in Time, which you might remember, around half of that through a crowd-funder last year, so we are aiming with this to push that up nearer the amount we need.”

Limerick fashion icon, Celia Holman Lee explained Sybil Connolly’s importance was to “the world really”.

Celia said, “She has been phenomenal, she dressed president’s wives, like the incredible Jackie Kennedy. For me, it was the way she used her fabrics, the most beautiful, beautiful fabrics, and a great designer creates a fabric, and then creates within the fabric a stitch which makes her unique in the world, and that’s what she did.

“Also the use of the linens, the magnificent lace, the fantastic taffetas and the wools of Irish heritage, and all the Irish fabrics. So to me she was iconic of course in Ireland, but iconic in also the world of fashion in her time.”

Sybil Connolly’s influence has been intergenerational, from her impact in the world of fashion in the 1950s to now, Chairperson of the Council of Irish Fashion Designers, Eddie Shanahan, said Sybil’s influence can be seen on current fashion students too.

“One of our speakers this evening for example is doing a different version, but still it’s innovating in linen just like Sybil did,” Eddie Shanahan told I Love Limerick.

The event gave a unique perspective on the importance of Sybil Connolly and the Archive as well as insight into the backstories of four innovative Irish designers and how they research and create their collections.

“Sybil used handkerchief linen pleated down nine metres to one metre, now, today you have a young designer, Amy Anderson from Northern Ireland and she’s using beetled linen, this is where you beat dampened linen with big wooden blocks, and she is doing it in the last mill in the world in a tiny village in Northern Ireland to do this technique,” the Council of Irish Fashion Designers Chairperson explained, adding, “So it’s interesting to see how those distant generations are experiments with Irish linen.”

There were opportunities for audience engagement during the Conversation and also to meet three other Limerick-based members of the Council of Irish Fashion Designers – Ejay Griffin Caroline Mitchell and Linda Wilson.

The Hunt Museum has recently introduced a 3D digitally printed exhibit as part of the Sybil Connolly Archive to provide enhanced access for visually impaired persons.

For more stories about The Hunt Museum go here

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Pictures: Olena Oleksienko/ilovelimerick

Richard is a presenter, producer, songwriter and actor. He was named the Limerick Person of the Year (2011) and won an online award at the Metro Éireann Media and Multicultural Awards (2011) for promoting multi-culturalism online. Richard says that the ilovelimerick.com concept is very much a community driven project that aims to document life in Limerick. So, that in 20 years time people can look back and remember the events that were making the headlines.