The lady vanishes

Writing in Vogue 25 years ago, Sir Roy Strong suggested that style "is simply the bastion against the cult of uniformity". He also noted that, contrary to popular belief, "no amount of bought style can ever be style. Money, grand houses, couture clothes, sparkling jewels, expensive cars, batteries of servants, acres of garden, all these are to no avail. They can never bring style. It is quieter, less obtrusive than its enemies would have it." Sheila, dowager Lady Dunsany offers perfect proof of Sir Roy's point. Later this week, after living more than half a century in this country, she is moving to England, and her departure will mean the loss of one of Ireland's most stylish denizens. Consistently her style has been unostentatious but, like that of the late Mariga Guinness, profoundly influential. Although she has enjoyed all privileges listed above - the houses, jewels, clothes etc - these were used as much to the advantage of others as herself. As her friends enthusiastically testify, for Sheila Dunsany style has represented a responsibility more than a privilege.

Born in London to Welsh parents, she moved to Ireland in 1947 after marrying Randall Plunkett, 19th Baron Dunsany, who died earlier this year. Her first husband, Maj. John Foley, Baron de Rutzen, had been killed in Italy in 1944; because of the war, the couple, who had one daughter, Victoria, had not seen each other for the previous three years. Soon after her second marriage, she moved into Dunsany Castle. According to architect Jeremy Williams, "the interiors created by Lady Dunsany expressed the effervescence of the post-war era, now only a dim memory in Dublin with the loss of the Russell and Hibernian Hotels." It was at this time that she began her long association with Irish fashion. She was particularly close to the late Sybil Connolly whose early career and subsequent success owed much to the support provided by Sheila Dunsany. The two women first met in Richard Alan's where the designer was working as manageress. "I went in to buy the inevitable little black dress," remembers Lady Dunsany, "and I didn't like anything I saw there except what she was wearing, which she had designed herself. I had one made and when I wore it, lots of people said how nice it was and went to her themselves." At this time, around 1951, Sybil Connolly was almost unknown as a designer. Sheila Dunsany, if not her very first client, was certainly among her earliest - and her assistance in making Connolly's name known was of enormous consequence.

A year later, Lady Dunsany went to stay in Philadelphia with Henry McIlhenny (owner of Glenveagh Castle in Co Donegal) and took with her six Sybil Connolly outfits which she wore at a party thrown by her host. This in turn led to a charity lunch in New York where the Connolly clothes were again shown "and through that, we got a few orders for her".

More importantly, Sheila Dunsany got the attention of Carmel Snow, Dublin-born editor of Harper's Bazaar and probably the most important woman in fashion at the time. Thanks to her interest, a group of American writers and store buyers came to Ireland for a weekend in July 1953 when the highlight of their trip was a Sybil Connolly fashion show - staged in the billiards room of Dunsany Castle. "I suppose it was my idea to hold it in the house," says Sheila Dunsany. "I'd been to something similar before in England and seen how well it worked. We'd little tables all around the room and lots of candles." Thanks to this show, Connolly's name was made in the United States, where she travelled for the first time two months later. Dunsany Castle and its grounds were also used for some of the designer's original shoots photographed by Richard Dormer; one picture taken for Life magazine showed model Ann Gunning with Sheila Dunsany's five-year old daughter Beatrice. "In the early years," Lady Dunsany remembers, "Sybil was very companionable and sweet to be with. We went to the Burren a couple of times to look at flowers; she loved flowers, you know? We stayed in a little house there belonging to David Webb and one time the electricity broke down. But you know, Sybil was so clever, she had a big mink coat and she wore that to bed." Sheila Dunsany still owns a number of Sybil Connolly's designs, particularly one of her pleated linen evening dresses in pale blue, which was bought to match a set of aquamarine jewellery.

"I was always interested in clothes, but I didn't necessarily have very much money. I got a lot at Worth; they used to give the clothes to me cheap provided I wore them a lot, so people would ask me where I got them. That used to happen a lot in the old days. Sybil rather failed me with day clothes; I mainly wore her cocktail and evening dresses. For day, I always wore Worth or Hardy Amies. But Sybil did make a lovely dress for my daughter Victoria when she married; it had a pleated linen skirt with a satin top. She advised on the eight little pages wearing black velvet set off with ruffles. Snowdon took pictures of the whole wedding." Even after 50 years, Sheila Dunsany still retains her tiny figure, which is why she can continue to wear the clothes made for her decades earlier. One piece remaining in her wardrobe is a skirt by Irene Gilbert dating from 1949/50. In white silk with arabesque swirls of black ribbon over the surface, originally "it had a rather smart chiffon blouse and a cummerbund; I bought it for a dance at the American embassy." Unlike Sybil Connolly, "Irene Gilbert was very quiet. She never talked much about what she did. But she was very talented; I bought clothes from her before I met Sybil." Another designer whose clothes she wore was Ib Jorgensen. "He was much better than anyone else and he took a lot of trouble." Among her contemporaries in Ireland, she describes Anne, Countess of Rosse as "rather spectacular. She was very good in evening clothes," but says the most stylish woman she knew here was Nancy, Countess of Dunraven. "She was always very suitably dressed and looked very good." While fashion has always played a role in Sheila Dunsany's life, it is the essence of her personal style that many other interests have also received attention. Among the most pressing was presidency of the Civics Institute, a charitable organisation founded earlier this century by indefatigable philanthropist Lady Aberdeen.

According to her friend Jane Falloon, "Sheila never talked about her involvement with boys' and girls' clubs in Dublin and how several times a week she would park her car in threatening streets and walk through the dark to the clubs. When there, she would encourage the teenagers to have confidence in their own abilities. She persuaded them to start magazines and write poetry; she influenced them to make a stand against drugs." Jane Falloon also remembers Sheila Dunsany deciding to tackle the problem of litter in Co Meath; "she could be seen every day for a week hauling old tins and boots and plastic bags out of the hedges." An impeccable eye for detail found its outlet not just in fashion or the clearance of rubbish but also in collecting art. A former president of the Friends of the National Collections, Sheila Dunsany has been an ardent art collector. "Oh I've bought dozens and dozens of paintings in my life," she says airily. "Graham Sutherland was the first person who made me buy pictures from my own age group. He got me interested in abstraction. And Derek Hill was always making me buy something."

Her grand-daughter Emily Naper says that when the painter Daniel O'Neill visited Dunsany, its chatelaine, discovering that he had no money, immediately paid for his travel expenses and bought a canvas. She still possesses one Jack Yeats painting (another, due to go to the National Gallery, was stolen from Dunsany Castle in 1990 and never recovered). "I don't mind changing things, though I've got a lovely Roderic O'Conor and I wouldn't change that." Lady Dunsany was also founder and chairperson of the Meath branch of the Multiple Sclerosis Society. According to another long-standing friend and admirer, Louise Wardell, "she was always particularly good at empathising with people who were suffering, and she could anticipate their needs".

Almost four years ago, on her way to Belfast in support of yet another charity - "I was going to be given some money for a wonderful eye hospital in the Gaza Strip in Israel" - Sheila Dunsany was involved in a serious car crash and has spent much of the time since recovering in hospital. "I broke just about everything down one side; that's why I'm here," she says of the nursing home in Clane, Co Kildare where she has been living for some time and is visited by loyal friends such as Jane Falloon and Louise Wardell, as well as Desmond and Penny Guinness, Hilary Wilson-Wright and Eileen Mount Charles. "I can walk," she explains, "but not for long. I have this vertigo thing, so I need to have someone's arm to support me." So, now aged almost 87 and more than 50 years after first coming here, she is moving to a home in Buckinghamshire where she will be near some of her grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. Those who have known her will regret the departure. As her grand-daughter Emily Naper comments, "I feel incredibly privileged to have been close to such a fascinating, strong, courageous lady."