Style icons
You can’t call yourself a movie or costume buff if you haven’t yet visited the wonderful (and free) Museum of Style Icons at Newbridge Silverware
One of my favourite things to do with my mother is visit the Museum of Style Icons (MOSI) at the Newbridge Silverware Visitor Centre in Newbridge, Co Kildare.
I cannot recommend MOSI highly enough. It’s free; it’s gorgeous; it’s always changing, and afterwards one can enjoy a slap-up meal in Newbridge Silverware’s excellent eatery, Cafe Carleton, named after the famous American interior designer Carleton Varney, who also designed it.
This year marks MOSI’s 10th anniversary. MOSI first began when Newbridge Silverware CEO, William Doyle, bought a Givenchy-designed dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in Charade. Since then, MOSI has become one of the most significant private collections of memorabilia from the worlds of Hollywood, music and celebrity.
This year is also the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death. Here, too, MOSI distinguishes itself by having one of the largest private collections of Princess Diana memorabilia. MOSI even lends to international exhibitions dedicated to her life.
What I didn’t realise until a visit last March to view the stunning work of Joseff — an early-Hollywood costume jeweller — courtesy of Julien’s Auctions in Los Angeles, was that MOSI’s collections aren’t just about wonderful costume designers, such as Edith Head.
Nor is it all about the amazing gowns that Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, Jayne Mansfield et al, wore at the height of their careers.
MOSI is also about modern classics-to-be. The museum’s collection now features several of Kim Kardashian’s dresses, and Christina Hendricks’s red dress from Rolling Stone’s iconic Mad Men cover of 2010.
To celebrate MOSI’s amazing history, we asked couturier Helen Cody — herself a designer to the stars — and style icon Celia Holman-Lee to pick their favourite dresses from the MOSI collection.
For a further bit of fun, we did a model search to find our very own ‘Kim’ and ‘Christina’ to model those stars’ actual dresses for our pages.
So convincing was model Sophia Scott (our Kim Kardashian) that, within hours of her arrival at our studio in Newbridge, the town was abuzz with the news that Kim Kardashian was visiting Newbridge Silverware!
MOSI is not just for girls, either. Currently, there is a cool 1960s-era exhibition based around Donovan’s career, which has the original vinyl generation bopping around MOSI’s corridors. Far out, man.