FASHION:Red is romance and passion entwined, and it stands out like fire against our earthy backgrounds, writes DEIRDRE MCQUILLAN
ONE WAY OF getting noticed is to wear red. It’s a bold colour and one with the greatest power of attraction. Red clothes stand out like fire against the Irish background of brown, green and blue, a contrast which explains its enduring popularity in this country.
Synge likened the madder red dresses of the Aran Island women to “a glow of almost Eastern richness”, a sight later captured so memorably in the paintings of Paul Henry. Yeats called red the colour of magic.
Red is the colour of blood, of passion and it carries all sorts of emotional and aesthetic associations. Deep rose is the traditional colour of romantic love suffusing all those Valentine’s Day hearts, whereas pink is traditionally associated with baby girls or older women.
Scarlet women need no explanation. The very first dress in an exhibition called Femme Fatale held in New York some years ago was a red satin evening dress by Worth from the 1880s with a tightly laced décolleté bodice and whiplash curves. Today’s red carpet dresses, in whatever shade of the spectrum, create maximum Jezebel impact and seem to radiate on the screen.
Taken all together, one can only imagine the effect of Dorothy Parker’s living room, which was painted in nine shades of red.
In fashion, red automatically means glamour and power and, according to fashion historian Valerie Steele, author of The Red Dress, "for symbolic and visual power, red has no equal except black. The little black dress is an icon of chic, but red has a unique allure."
Glamour became associated with the 1930s in the Depression years when the public needed its goddesses, as Valentino was quick to realise with his floor-sweeping scarlet gowns. More recently, the pop porn of Madonna and Britney Spears, with its corsets, high heels, cami tops and underwear as outerwear in flame red satin or silk, has had a greater influence on today’s high-street styles.
For this red-inspired shoot, photographed by Sarah Doyle and a perfect choice for Valentine’s Day, stylist Anne Keane chose romantic red dresses from Irish designers such as Joanne Hynes, Helen McAlinden and Aideen Bodkin for model Fiona De La Mere to sport in the shady woods of Killiney Hill.
“It’s about a little girl in a big space, suggestive of Little Red Riding Hood, and it was modelled,” says Doyle, “because Fiona can express such sense of wonderment and she’s so inspiring.” There’s a magical, mysterious quality to these images too, but that’s the power of red in a fairytale Irish setting.