Peter brings the beautiful people to Dunnes
Fashion goes in one ear and out the other, I always say. And then there are the timeless creations of Saint Peter O’Brien. I say ‘Saint’ because he can do no wrong.
The suave, silver-coiffured Irish couturier is launching his first ever summer collection for Dunnes Stores this Thursday at 6pm on Grafton Street. In fact, it is his first summer collection for almost a decade.
“So I was a tad nervous,” Peter told me. “Most designers will tell you they are happier developing winter layers than they are baring the body for sunnier times.”
Happily, Peter has been spared “the terrors” of designing bikinis and sun hats and has instead “concentrated on an almost ‘season-less’ collection of garments that one can wear to a Communion, a board meeting or a night on the town”.
Peter, naturally, has a wonderfully loyal group of customers and, as such, he is expecting, among others, guests Deborah Veale, Caroline Sleiman, Sharon Donnelly and her daughter Becky, Mairead Whisker, Louise Stokes from Loulerie, Ruth from Appassionata, as well as Peter’s actor friends Marion O’Dwyer and Cathy Belton.
This is to say nothing of the beautiful (if occasionally, through no fault of their own, po-faced) bag-hags of the Irish fashion press.
“These launches get more terrifying as opposed to less so. I shall be there to welcome everyone of course, but if truth be told,” Peter told me, and I’m telling you, “I’m far happier with a pencil in my hand drawing at my table than being a social butterfly, with my arthritis more like a social Rip Van Winkle,” he laughed.