Pauric Sweeney on his tod after split
Culturally astute young beauties can form an orderly queue now. Donegal dandy and one of the most influential Irish designers of the 21st century, Pauric Sweeney, has broken up with his Italian girlfriend, Ludo Ferrai-Cesena. The split happened months ago.
Sweeney’s on his tod, anyone?
It is unlikely that Pauric — who bears a certain resemblance to Cary Grant channelling Beau Brummell — will be single for very long. (Indeed he was spotted last night in Farrier & Draper with a mystery, Titian-haired lovely. I can solve the mystery — it was me.)
Although any prospective suitor, however sexy, will first have to get him in one country long enough to bring him on a date, as Pauric spends his life flying between London, Paris, New York and Seoul, where his fashions seem to fly off the shelves. (His internationally feted handbags are literally the arm-candy of tout le monde from Kate Moss, Madonna, Victoria Beckham to Naomi Campbell and Alexa Chung; and his prestigious creations have been sold in department stores like Harrods in London, Bergdorf Goodman in New York, Barneys in Tokyo and our own Brown Thomas in Dublin).
“Business is great,” Pauric told me as he prepared to get on a plane and fly back from Seoul last Wednesday. He has been living in Wexford and is planning to move back to Dublin next month.
Suzy Menkes, the International Herald Tribune grand dame, once said that Pauric’s work possessed “arresting narrative of suburbia-to-subversive.” I imagine when Pauric (he was renting a €3,000-a-month penthouse in Donnybrook in 2013), will doubtless bring plenty of stylish subversion to suburbia.
Your diarist is certain that there will be no shortage of places for Pauric to bring any future girlfriend, or topics to be discussed, as his first collection was at the Louvre in Paris with a show he called Wish U Were Gothic.