Prosperity, refinement, sensuality and sociability: Lillies Bordello gathered together all the essential ingredients of La Belle ╔poque for its Moulin Rouge ball on Halloween night. The little green fairy absinthe was absent, but in her place, waving the magic wand of a trip to Paris for the night's best-dressed couple, was Smirnoff ice queen Karen O'Neill and her fellow judges, Alan Ramsey (aka Mr Pussy) and Caroline Morahan, presenter of The Fame Game.
Caroline, replete with champagne feather headdress, hold-ups and diamantΘ tattoos, was almost bursting with fabulousness out of her tight corset - a gorgeous surprise birthday gift from the designers Virginia Macari and Anthony Brennan - and had to protect her modesty with a tasteful fan of feathers.
Shimmering chanteuse Naimee Coleman, whose album, Bring Down the Moon, is the shining light of the Irish charts, must have also brought down the stars for the night, she did twinkle so. Last week she recorded a segment for comedian Jason Byrne's upcoming show, which begins on Monday on Network 2, along with fellow guests Podge and Rodge. It was, she said, "a truly frightening experience".
Koo Donnelly and Freddie Browne had an extra feather boa to to their caps - last year they experienced for themselves the "spectacular spectacular" that is the real Moulin Rouge in gay Paris. "It was amazing - though if we dressed like they dressed we'd be wearing very very little at all," confessed Donnelly, wrapped in a delicate white ostrich feather boa. "They are so talented and acrobatic you forget they are wearing almost nothing. One girl jumped into water and started wrestling with a real live python."
Dave Egan, who owns Lillies, and his wife, MairΘad, wearing a choker that set off her ruffled bodice to stunning effect, were entertaining American David Doane (who had earlier hosted a party at his St Stephen's Green penthouse), French artist Marc Salem and Arabella Bishop, head of Sotheby's in Ireland.
The party got into full swing as the clock ticked into the early hours. And who were the evening's best-dressed couple? Winging their way to Paris will be Brendan Fitzpatrick and Patricia Kavanagh - he dressed as the glittering courtesan in fishnets, sequinned boob tube and hairy chest, and she cunningly disguised with a bowler hat, waistcoat and fake moustache.