"Fashion is always about forward-thinking; you certainly don't look back, and to go back 50 years - well, I can tell you what, I had blocked all that out of my life, but I eventually got into the swing of it."
So said 82-year-old Neilli Mulcahy at the opening last night in the National Museum of Ireland at Collins Barracks of a retrospective exhibition devoted to her work as a couturiere in Dublin in the 1950s and 1960s.
Daughter of Gen Richard Mulcahy, she trained at the Grafton Academy, opened her salon in South Frederick St, Dublin, in l952 at the age of 27 and ran it until her retirement in l970. She was by then married and a mother of six children.
Known for her pioneering and innovative use of Irish fabrics, particularly tweed, Mulcahy has a special place in the history of Irish fashion. She collaborated with Irish weavers, print designers and knitters to produce distinctive fabrics in vibrant colours. That, combined with a rigorous couture training in Paris with Jacques Heim, official dressmaker to Madame de Gaulle, where she learnt how to finish garments (famously making 34 buttonholes on a dress at one sitting), made her designs successful both at home and abroad. She was responsible, for example, for the entire wardrobe of Mrs Seán T O'Kelly ("Aunty Phyllis") on the occasion of the first Irish presidential State visit to the US in l959, including a gown worn on St Patrick's Day to the White House.
That dress in Youghal lace mounted on chiffon over a green underdress is one of the 22 garments on display, along with photographs, fabrics, accessories and drawings associated with her annual fashion shows. The exhibition illustrates the breadth of her work, from hand- beaded chiffons and velvet ballgowns to city suits and casual country wear.
The Neilli Mulcahy archive, assembled by her biographer Liz Clery and donated to the National Museum as a resource for scholars and students, contains garments, photographs, press cuttings and artefacts connected with an haute couture salon. Amongst the guests at last night's opening by Kathleen Watkins were members of Mulcahy's family, including her seven daughters all wearing vintage Mulcahy outfits from the 1950s and 1960s.