Betty was a stylist with vision
STYLIST HELPED SAVE TEMPLE BAR AND CREATED A GOLDEN AGE OF FASHION
BETTY Bunn (née Wall), stylist extraordinaire, was one of those people who could predict the future; in fashion and in ecology. Which is another way of saying she had a rare ability to read the zeitgeist. In the 1970s, she opened one of the first vintage shops in Ireland in Dandelion Green, Dublin. It was this innate appreciation for all things heritage which led to her being the catalyst for the preservation of Temple Bar.
In the late 1970s, while Temple Bar was still suffering from acute urban decay, Betty Wall pitched her legendary vintage shop Lost Belongings in Crown Alley. By then, she had met her life partner, the English-born photographer Mike Bunn, whom she had persuaded to set up studio in the quarter.
Her shop attracted art students, fledgling designers and tourists and within a short time the pair had gathered around them the golden circle which was to become the great flowering of Irish fashion in the 1980s.
There were designers John Rocha, Michael Mortell, Eily Doolin, Beverley Dean, Richard Lewis, models Sharon Bacon, Mari O’Leary, Ali Dunne, and the odd hairdresser. Styling was in its infancy (models were responsible for their own accessories, hair and make-up), but she soon changed that.
The pair held court every Thursday night at a specially reserved table at Lock’s Restaurant on the Grand Canal. In the early 1980s, CIE intended to turn Temple Bar into a giant bus depot. It was indirectly because of Lost Belongings that the real lost belonging, the historic quarter itself, came into sharp focus. After her shop in Crown Alley was vandalised, Betty moved a street away to a rundown site on Fownes Street and, while stripping back centuries of neglect to create an attractive environment for her wares, she came across a hidden world of Georgian commercial Dublin. It transpired the site she had chosen was “the best example of the single-doored, double-front shop in Dublin”.
The rest is history; the conservationists became involved, the bus depot plan was abandoned and the low rents in the area attracted an artistic colony of galleries, studios and artisan shops. And Betty Wall and Mike Bunn were at the centre of it. She persuaded him to showcase the new flourishing Irish fashion movement in shoots for Cara magazine. She, in turn, reinvented styling, in the process creating an early version of “grunge”. It was second nature to her.
Orphaned at an early age, she left her native Crumlin in Dublin for Paris as a very young woman.
From there she hopped to London to a job in Harrods, at the legendary Way In boutique - home from home for the bright young things in the mid-1960s. But she was an entrepreneur at heart and returned to Ireland.
After Temple Bar, it was inevitable the couple would move on. In 1991, the moved to a cottage in Ballyrush, near Lough Arrow, from where they continued to spot talent and dominate the fashion scene.
They were both passionate about all things Irish. They created many iconic Fáilte Ireland brochures as these consummate townies embraced the countryside as a way of life.
Betty was an early advocate of the green economy, pioneering the therapeutic value of products from the sea. The couple turned their talents to food and interiors.
Betty lost her long fight against cancer on April 4 th. She spent her last days in North West Hospice where her life partner looked at her through the window, and brought her beloved garden to her by taping daffodils and primroses to the outside of the window.
She is survived by her husband Mike Bunn and her brother Tony.