IT looks as if Kitty Kiernan (aka Julia Roberts) has become the darling of the fashion world judging by the collections of the 23. designers who work in the Design Centre in Powerscourt Town House. The hats are pure 1916 and so, too, are the long, hobbled skirts and the closely cut coats.
Visualise it all in black, dark brown or ripe grape and the only thing that I missing are the men in their tight three piece suits and Homburg hats. Adjusting to what seems like a costume drama takes a few minutes but then it suddenly all comes together and seems spot on. Isn't it time women became a bit more mysterious? There is nothing like a brimmed hat and a buttoned up coat for doing that.
Along with the mystery comes romance even tailoring can have its lighter moments and, though skirts and trousers are impeccable, jackets and coats move from the lean to the swing in easy stages. One style cropping up again and again is the tailored, neat short coat worn with narrow trousers. (Lorna Doone, Yellow Hammer, Allicano, Carmel Carroll all showing how it's done but also offering looser versions.)
Kitty also pops up in Miriam Mone's marvellously elegant lines in which a long, black Balkan fur, almost trailing the ground, plays a major part. But there are hugely elegant, velvet trimmed crepe coats all buttoned up and neat and shorter than the matching skirts, with the final period touch a black velvet wrap.
Mone's collection looked every bit as good in charcoal and cherry red. It was, however, almost identical to Louise Kennedy's - but that's fashion for you.
Kennedy's comes in the deepest grape, a rather more sophisticated colour than black, but all the slim tailoring and co-ordination is beautifully controlled right down to the silk and velvet wraps every detail in place.
The style of the day becomes the style of the night, only now it is in velvet, all kinds, from slinky stretch (Yellow Hammer), to the finest devorees. Kennedy catches the mood in olive green for a long, one button jacket and pencil trousers.
Brid Nihill is one who can put glamour into everything, even a coat - faux fur for instance, mixed in with leopard prints, satin wraps and lace evening sheaths. Knitters of note include Edel MacBride and Deirdre Fitzgerald who seem to use everything but wool to create plains of smoothness with textured detail. But even here the line has gone much slimmer and neater.
While differing in interpretation, this group of designers is actually working on a theme: it's dark, it's refined, it's close cut and, would you believe it, it's ladylike. Good for Kitty Kiernan.