They love Millie, the Stephen Pearce Millennium Totem Pole Woman, who stands tall and sells for £3,000. Sold to the woman in the fur coat, possibly. The Round Room of the Mansion House is lit up like a fairy tree for the charity auction of specially commissioned pieces.
The Kilkenny Group, which has organised the event, hopes to raise over £100,000 for the Simon Community Ireland, the Simon Community Northern Ireland and Enable Ireland. And they do.
Style is: on one of the wettest, stormiest nights of the year, designer of hats, Rita Daly, wears a delicate 1940s style red feather hat. She has travelled up from Tullamore, Co Offaly, with her husband, Nigel Ravenhill. Style is: Pauline Tierney, from Blackrock - wearing an eye-veil and a gold embroidered Indian jacket. For vision, look to the designer, Miriam Mone and her husband, Willie Healy, who have come to admire all the pieces and look at her own burgundy creation, The Goddess Dress, which is inspired by Aphrodite - the goddess of love and beauty.
Marian O'Gorman, chief executive of the Kilkenny Group, is pleased with the turnout - the rain being the one worry. The group, she explains, "wanted to do something different" to mark the millennium. Her younger sister, Bernadette Kelleher-Nolan, is also here helping to organise and oversee. The two of them "love" Millie too. So do we - her hat, her ears, her nose, her breasts, the whole of her. As a pot in the shape of a pole, she is unsurpassed.