As any competent editor knows, nothing is easier to compile or so certain to stir up controversy on publication than a list. Who is the richest, smartest, most glamorous, best dressed? The inclusion - or exclusion - of names will always attract attention.
So the roll call of Ireland's stylish women in this month's Image magazine has led to an inevitable debate over who did and did not make the grade. Some of those featured - good manners precludes citing specific names - ought not to have been. And, as ever with pieces of this kind, there are notable absences, Patricia Jorgensen and Vivienne Guinness being two of the most glaring omissions. But by suggesting in the Sunday Times and subsequently on radio that stylishness is in short supply among the Irish, designer Paul Costelloe has added an extra, and entertaining, dimension to discussion of Image's provocative feature. In one respect, he is certainly correct: even were the magazine's 90 stylish women to be augmented or cut back, they would still not be representative of this State, just as the handful of Ireland's richest entrepreneurs or exceptionally gifted sportsmen are not.
Stylishness requires single-mindedness of a kind only a few people are willing to accept. The late Diana Vreeland, editor of American Vogue in the 1960s, used to blacken the soles of her shoes every evening even though no one might see them the next day; that's style. The Hon Mrs Daisy Fellowes, when travelling overnight to the south of France from Paris, would rise at 5 a.m. in order to be impeccably groomed on arrival. Mona Bismark is said to have taken to her bed with grief for three days in 1968 when the couturier, Balenciaga, announced his retirement. These are instances of stylishness at its most sublime and silly.
Frankly, it is unlikely many Irish women would engage in this kind of behaviour. While there are plenty of stylish folk - of both sexes - in Ireland, personal style here tends to occupy a fairly low place on the average scale of priorities. There is nothing new about this, because in the history of fashion and style, Ireland barely registers a presence. For at least the past three centuries, we have worn the same clothing as our neighbours across the Irish Sea, only often not as well. Scan journals, diaries and memoirs of visitors to Ireland since 1700 and scarcely any references to a uniquely Irish style will be found. Occasionally, an Irish woman's looks may be noted.
Outstanding in this respect were the Gunning sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, daughters of an impoverished Co Roscommon landowner, who in the mid-18th century caused a sensation on their arrival in London where they eventually married the Earl of Coventry and the Duke of Hamilton respectively. However, they drew attention, thanks not to their style but a unique combination of great beauty and profound stupidity; Mrs Delany rather cattily remarked that the Gunnings' want of discretion surpassed their want of fortune.
Thackeray, when travelling in the west of Ireland during the 1840s, noted the heavy socks being knitted there, and other intermittent accounts crop up of cloaks in west Cork and red petticoats in Connemara. Only in the very poorest and most remote parts of the country did an Irish style survive into this century. The affluent and urban of Ireland instinctively looked to England for a lead in fashion. It is, therefore, perfectly understandable that when two years ago Elizabeth McCrum of the Ulster Museum compiled a history of Irish fashion, she began at 1950. Only after that date, largely thanks to the efforts of Sybil Connolly and Irene Gilbert, did a sense of style that was unmistakably Irish begin to appear. One of Gilbert's most loyal clients was Anne, Countess of Rosse, who once bought a roll of woven wool in Co Galway, had it dyed a traditional vivid red and then made into a suit by the designer.
Connolly, who died only earlier this year, was extraordinarily imaginative in her use of classic Irish materials. She took handkerchief linen and pleated it finely to make dresses which still look wonderfully fresh. Striped linen teatowels were sewn together in her workrooms to create billowing skirts and then teamed with hand-crocheted blouses.
But despite their pioneering work, Sybil Connolly and Irene Gilbert, as well as their successors such as Neilli Mulcahy, could do little to educate or alter popular taste, not least because they worked for an exclusive, wealthy clientele, the forbears of the women currently to be seen in Image.
Trying to define what elements might constitute Irish style remains well-nigh impossible. Two years ago, the Irish Times's fashion pages ran a series exploring this subject. What soon became apparent was that while the Irish have no clear idea or image of their personal style, outside observers such as American designer Donna Karan and Paris Vogue editor Joan Juliet Buck most certainly do. For them, Irish dress is a mist-drenched time warp of Aran sweaters - fashion's equivalent of the Irish coffee in its artificial air of antiquity - Carrickmacross lace and Donegal tweed. This is the romantic view of Ireland which would have us, its inhabitants, still living in white-washed cottages and clad like extras from The Quiet Man.
None of the women photographed for Image wears tweed and lace, nor are these materials much used by the most successful of the current generation of Irish designers. The latter, in fact, are an eclectic lot and reflect the essentially fragmented nature of Irish society at the moment. Louise Kennedy's clothes, for example, cited by several of the Image women as among their favourites, display a certain Italian character. Similarly, Lainey Keogh's knitwear weaves Irish and oriental influences together and John Rocha, who grew up in Hong Kong after all, owes as much to his Chinese as European background.
If Irish women do not have a strong sense of national style, neither do the designers who serve them. When it comes to individual dress sense here, the result is very often a muddle and, unquestionably at times, an over-dependence on recognised labels. Of course many Irish women make mistakes; without a long history of style behind them, what else should be expected? If, as Paul Costelloe argues, they are "scared of fashion," this is due to its relative novelty in their lives.
Look at the women chosen by Image as epitomising Irish style today and notice certain shared characteristics. Obviously, the majority of them are extremely affluent and urban. But in addition, they are mostly what is euphemistically described as being of a certain age.
That is the nature of style; it takes time and, as a rule, is not available to youth. The young have many advantages, but rarely stylishness which can only be acquired properly through experience and a well-honed eye. If certain other European races, such as the Italians and French, epitomise style, this is because their cultures permit them to draw on hundreds of years' knowledge in the matter. And even age cannot guarantee stylishness. Just as an expensively dressed woman is not necessarily a well-dressed woman, so the English - masters, after all, in the field of fashion - could never hope to be considered stylish.
Style only comes after long training and the kind of ruthless discipline demonstrated by the likes of Diana Vreeland, Coco Chanel, Jackie Onassis and, in the last years of her life, Diana, Princess of Wales.
Where the Irish have achieved an international reputation - in music, in literature - they have had the advantage of a long refining period in which the form has been perfected. The same thing may yet happen in this country's fashion arena, once enough time has passed and provided sufficient devotion to the cause of stylishness has been shown.
In general, Paul Costelloe is right; at the moment Irish women are not among the world's most stylish. But really, aside from disgruntled Image readers who feel they have been unfairly overlooked, who cares?
