Jane and Sarah McDonnell are the eldest and youngest of a family of four, with nine years between them. Both went to Trinity College, Dublin.
Jane went to London after college where her first job was with Vogue under the editorship of Beatrix Miller and later Anna Wintour; she returned to Dublin at the age of 25 to edit Image magazine. In 1999 she passed the editorship to Sarah and became managing director of Image Publications, retaining editorship of Image Interiors. Jane is married to Donald Hickey, and they have three children: Hugo (12), Daisy (10) and William (5). Sarah is married to Mark Taylor, and they have a three-year-old daughter, May.
JANE
My earliest memory of Sarah is actually the day she was born; I remember it so well because when my mother came to collect me from school, she was in labour! She had five of us crammed in the car and she calmly told the teacher that she was going to go and get us home because she was about to have a baby. Sarah was born a few hours later and, as she was to demonstrate in later life, she made her presence felt!
Sarah is a very special person; she has a wonderful sense of fun, a wicked sense of humour and is a great mimic, always finding the exact turn of phrase, the expression, the key words. For family occasions she will often pen a verse or two, always spot-on, but never hurtful.
She has a really mad sense of humour, great cleverness with words, extraordinary recall. She is like a human archive. If anyone ever wants something from a back issue of the magazine, for example, she can retrieve it instantly. I think my daughter Daisy has inherited her offbeat humour, her sense of the absurd, the ridiculous. She introduced Daisy to Hillaire Belloc and Roald Dahl. I would trust Sarah completely with my children; she is a wonderful aunt to them. Children are drawn by her gentleness.
She is diplomatic, too. Very sensitive and always manages to find the right words in difficult circumstances ... very attuned to people.
She can also be stunningly self-possessed. She once had to stand in for me and give a speech without notice and she stood up and spoke straight from the heart and with great insight. I think people are unaware of how extraordinarily capable she is; she is very modest, private, serious and always sees things through.
She will always rise to the occasion. The best story I can think of to illustrate this harks back to when she was landed with the job of minding Valery Giscard d'Estaing's grandchildren. She was 19, I think. They were incredibly demanding, of course, as only the French can be and she had to drive them here and there - even though she had never driven before - speaking French, having them perfectly turned out for tea, herding them on to helicopters. She did it! She just turned around and did it perfectly.
She has much more of an appetite for quiet times than I have. Our parents brought us every year for the obligatory month in Connemara and while it would be torture for me, she would be happy surrounded by books and papers, gazing out at the landscape.
In terms of working together, I am so proud of her achievements on the magazine and at how polished it has become. She is a perfectionist, very focused. We have never had a falling-out. We are close as a family. We grew up with young parents and I think that informs how we are with our own children. We are both working mums and know we have to devote our time wisely to family and work. She does that very well.
SARAH
Jane brings a sense of celebration to everything she does; she galvanises the rest of us. She has a wonderful enthusiasm for life; I am much more quiet. When it comes to ideas she's the full set of fireworks; I'm a slow burner. She'll crack off 10 ideas in a heartbeat.
Because there are nine years between us, my memories of Jane really begin at 10, when I was crazy about ballet and she sent me ballet shoes and some make-up. When I was about 14 I went to see her in London - it might have been my first trip away from home on my own - and I remember being blown away by her life and her circle of friends - one of whom had a sports car. It was a turning point for me, watching how she lived and worked. The glamour!
I would say my mum and dad and all my siblings have made me who I am, but Jane has a special place, perhaps because she is the eldest. I have learned everything about work from her. She has encouraged me - and believed in me - which made me feel I could achieve a lot.
Working for her was a natural progression. After college I did some freelance work and then she took me on as a Girl Friday doing beauty, fashion, a bit of everything. I became irritatingly indispensable! I did that for three years. In 1999, with the expansion of the company, she passed the editorship of the magazine to me while she focused on the commercial side, taking the magazine up to an international level and transforming it into a multi-million euro business.
Jane's house is a happy house. You get a sense that she is creating something unique for her family, full of interest and comfort. She is terrific at celebrations, the best fun of all our family when she gets going. She'll never let anything pass but always says 'Oh we have to celebrate that.' Even when she is under pressure she'll have a laugh. If pressure builds in the office we just freak out one minute and laugh the next. She combines work and family with grace.
I think if we were countries, she'd be Italy: I imagine her sitting around a big table with a group of friends having a laugh. I would be France. More reserved, I guess.