Such is Byrdie Skehan's devotion to business that more than 50 years after opening Helene Modes, she still comes into the shop six days a week. "I open the place every morning and close it every night," she says. "I'm a perfectionist and have to have things right. The shop is my whole life; I'm married to it."

Eighty last spring, she originally started the company in November 1947 with her sister and brother-in-law, Norah and Tom Cusack. "When we opened, my sister bought, I sold and Tom paid." Both the Cusacks have since died but two of their offspring, Helma Lynam and Terry Cusack, work at Helene Modes while another daughter, Rhoda, maintains a connection as her husband looks after the accounts.

Byrdie Skehan and her sister grew up on a farm in Co Clare; when this proved insufficient to support them, they moved into Limerick and retailing. "I suppose if I hadn't done this, I'd have stayed farming. I was very successful at that in my time." The name Helene Modes may now sound charmingly old-fashioned, but the shop tries to keep abreast of changes in customer taste. "People are more up-to-date now and smarter," Byrdie Skehan remarks, comparing the present with the post-Emergency period when she first began selling fashion. "There's more money being spent on clothes." Helene Modes has always occupied the same site on Roches Street - a second outlet, opened 18 years ago, can be found in the Crescent Shopping Centre - even if its internal appearance and stock has been regularly altered. "We started with jumpers and skirts," Byrdie remembers, "and then when we were only open a year, we brought in coats. We just started at the right time after the war. There were very few shops then; but three others opened at the same time as us and we're the only one to survive." Asked why this should be the case, she simply answers, "they weren't as clever as us". Cleverness means being constantly aware of what will and will not appeal to the market. Over the past weekend, Helma Lynam has been buying for next spring at the huge twice-yearly clothing trade fair in Dusseldorf. German labels tend to predominate among the stock, with names such as Basler, Betty Barclay, Escada, Laurel and Joseph Janard to the fore. The last of these is a recent addition which has proved hugely successful - "we'd try out a new brand every season," says Helma Lynam, adding that some have met with a better response than others. Among Irish designers carried by the shop, Paul Costelloe remains consistently popular with Limerick consumers. According to Helma Lynam, "we like to keep brands exclusive to us"; thanks to this, any increase in new retail outlets in the Limerick region has tended not to affect existing business. "Those high street shops and chains wouldn't have any impact on us because we have a completely different clientele. We'd be glad to see them coming into town; it means people don't have to go elsewhere when they want to do their shopping." While many retailers have suffered over the past few months as unseasonal cold weather deterred prospective purchasers from investing in a summer wardrobe, Helma Lynam can claim "we're up five per cent on last year, although we hoped to do better than that". Both she and her aunt place a high value on good service as a means of ensuring customer loyalty. Regular clients are telephoned when new stock becomes available, and tend to return to the same sales assistant each season, "because they trust us all," Helma Lynam insists. "We're always honest with our customers and tell them if something isn't right. People keep coming back, but because everyone gets older, we have to bring in younger clients all the time." Like many other such shops, for the past few years Helene Modes has been carrying a range of debs dresses which have proved both good for immediate business and a means of attracting a new generation into the premises. However, the typical Helene Modes customer will tend to be over the age of 25 since most younger women would not be able to afford the shop's prices. Sizes range from eight to 24, just as the clientele runs from urban professionals to women living in the country "and the racing crowd", Byrdie adds. "A lot of people when they come to town want to see what the shop is like and what we've got. We have customers from Cork, Galway and Kerry, a lot from Tipperary - it's very wide."

"We're lucky in Limerick," says Helma Lynam. "People here are very conscious of looking right and wearing smart, serviceable clothes. Most of our customers wouldn't wear the same things from one year to the next; they wouldn't say that because they have one black suit, they don't need another." Will there be a third generation of the family working at Helene Modes? Although both Helma Lynam and her brother have children, none of them she says "have expressed an interest in the shop yet, but we haven't put any pressure on them either. It's not like when we were young - right from the start, it was expected of us that we'd go into the business. I'm very glad of that now; Helene Modes has given me a good livelihood."