NEILLI MULCAHY: AS ONE of the best known names in Irish fashion in the 1950s and 1960s, Neillí Mulcahy, who has died aged 87, was a standard bearer for the new Ireland.
Before opening her haute couture salon on South Frederick Street in 1951 at the age of 26, she had trained in Paris with the couturier Jacques Heim, official dressmaker to Madame de Gaulle, where she learned the rigours of the trade, how to hand finish seams, hems and edges, famously making 34 buttonholes on a dress at one sitting. Her workmanship was legendary.
Known for her pioneering and innovative use of Irish fabrics, particularly tweed, Mulcahy has a special niche in the history of Irish fashion. She collaborated with Irish weavers, print designers and knitters to produce distinctive fabrics in vibrant colours and weights. As her career developed, so did her particular style which concentrated on cut and texture with minimal detailing or embellishment, “soignée tailored clothes for elegant women” as The Irish Times commented. She was responsible for the entire wardrobe of Mrs Seán T O’Kelly (Auntie Phyllis) on the occasion of the first presidential State visit to the US in 1959. A dress in Youghal lace mounted on chiffon over a green underdress was worn on St Patrick’s Day to the White House.
Born in Dublin in 1925, Mulcahy came from a long line of educated nationalist working women. She was the daughter of General Richard Mulcahy, co-founder of Fine Gael, and a sister of veteran cardiologist Prof Risteárd Mulcahy. Her mother, Min Ryan, came from a large, nationalist farming family in Wexford and was a founding member of Cumann na mBan.
Although Mulcahy initially studied science at university, she left it to take classes at the Grafton Academy of Dress Design before moving to Paris after her graduation. On her return to Dublin and the opening of her salon, she held her first formal fashion show at her family’s rambling home Lissenfield in Rathmines in January 1955, and quickly established a reputation for well-cut casual ensembles and glamorous evening wear. The celebrated Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli, a visiting judge, awarded her first prize at a Dublin show.
Her clients, drawn from the social and political circles of the day, wore her clothes – the printed báiníns, the gossamer tweeds, the knitted woollen dresses and tunics – “to show they were Irish and modern both at home and abroad”, according to Mulcahy’s friend and biographer Liz Clery.
“Her styling was essentially Paris-based, but she was perceived as the first truly Irish designer because of the huge emphasis on Irish fabrics.”
She designed uniforms for Aer Lingus in 1963 in McNutt tweed from Donegal, as well as uniforms for CIÉ, Allied Irish Banks and the Great Southern Hotels.
Along with couturiers Ib Jorgensen, Irene Gilbert and Clodagh, Mulcahy founded the Irish Haute Couture Group to promote Irish fashion abroad and her success spread to the US where she made many regular trips to show her collections.
Though her business continued to thrive there, in Germany and at home, fashion in the final years of the 1960s changed radically with haute couture hit hard by the emergence of ready-to-wear and popular culture. Mulcahy resisted pressure to get into mass manufacturing, but the decreasing demand for made-to-measure clothes and increasing pressure of raising a large family led her to close her premises in 1970. For some years afterwards she worked part-time as a consultant before retiring from fashion completely.
In October 2007, a retrospective exhibition of her work opened in the National Museum of Ireland at Collins Barracks.
“Fashion is always 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,” she told this paper at the time, with characteristic gusto.
Assembled by Liz Clery, her archive was donated to the National Museum of Ireland as a resource for scholars and students and contains garments, photographs, press cutting and artefacts connected with a haute couture salon. The exhibition illustrated the breadth of her work from hand-beaded chiffons and velvet ballgowns to city suits and casual country wear.
Married to solicitor Tommy Bacon, she was much loved and was the nucleus of her large family. At her funeral, friends and female family relatives wore the Mel Bradley hand-painted silk scarves she was so fond of giving to them as gifts. Right up to the end she continued to support Irish designers and was a regular visitor to Showcase at the RDS and a vigorous champion of young talent.
She is survived by her husband, Tommy, and daughters Anne, Maire, Helen, Orna, Cathy, Karin and Sarah.
Neillí Mulcahy: born February 27th, 1925, died May 6th, 2012