F RO CK STARS
A certain costume can evoke passionate memories of a film or TV show and a new exhibition celebrates the Irish designers now renowned internationally
Film costumes can become iconic. Think of Audrey Hepburn’s black and white Cecil Beaton dress from My Fair Lady, Judy Garland’s red ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz and Marilyn Monroe’s pleated white dress from The Seven Year Itch. All of these were saved by the actress Debbie Reynolds, who bought most of them at an MGM prop and costume auction in 1970.
She tried unsuccessfully for years to get the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to provide a home for her collection until in 2021 it opened a museum devoted to the history of movies, five years after her death. Without Reynolds’ foresight, many items could have been lost or destroyed.
In Ireland, we are now finally preserving our film and TV costumes too. In early May, the Museum of Style Icons at Newbridge Silverware, in conjunction with The Irish Costume Archive Project (ICAP), opened an exhibition of 18 Irish film and TV costumes, titled Iconic Costumes Of The Irish Silver Screen. Many have featured in Ireland’s most famous screen dramas, including My Left Foot, Braveheart, In The Name Of
The Father, Breakfast On Pluto, The Banshees Of Inisherin, An Cailín Ciúin, Vikings and Normal People.
ICAP’s Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh and Veerle Dehaene want to celebrate the contribution of film to Ireland, and in turn the contribution of costume to the film industry. Eimer is an Emmy-nominated costume designer whose resumé includes The Banshees Of Inisherin, The Wind that Shakes The Barley and Breakfast On Pluto, while Veerle is a costume practitioner who worked with designer Joan Bergin in her rental business, The Costume Mill.
When Joan decided to close The Mill and sell its thousands of garments in 2017, Eimer and Veerle volunteered to curate the most important items to keep them in Ireland. Ardmore Studios initially gave ICAP a temporary storage space and later Wicklow County Council. While very welcome, this space isn’t open to the public so Eimer and Veerle set about looking for a venue that would be. The Museum of Style Icons at Newbridge proved ideal. Already known for hosting iconic costumes from Hollywood films, it had both the expertise and environment to showcase Irish costumes.
The costume show at MOSI, which will run for a year, allows some of ICAP’s most famous garments to be appreciated up close. It will also raise the profile of Irish film costume and the craftspeople who made them. The show ranges from the elaborate costumes by Joan Bergin for Vikings to the striking simplicity of Louise Stanton’s yellow cotton dress in An Cailín Ciúin. Eimer explains that, historically, there was no value seen in costumes, especially contemporary ones. She reveals many were routinely thrown into a skip at the end of filming and it is only recently that more value has been placed on preserving them. ‘Debbie Reynolds was really smart what she did, but she found it impossible,’ Eimer says. ‘Everybody thought she was crazy at the time but what she did was important.’
So too is ICAP’s initiative for Ireland’s film culture. While Eimer is aware of the value of celebrity memorabilia, that is not what has driven her. ‘It’s about creating something that would be important for future generations, that we document the Irish film industry,’ she says. ‘That’s really what we’re interested in doing.’
Finding funding has been a challenge. ‘We’ve done the rounds and we’ve been told that we don’t qualify,’ she admits. ‘We just keep falling between different stools in terms of trying to get funding.’
Some day they hope to have a permanent space for the archive. Eimer references the idea of an Irish Film Museum, but for the moment that remains an aspiration. ‘Hopefully, somebody will see that there is a space there maybe for a film museum – I know the Irish
‘DESIGNING COSTUMES IS ALL ABOUT FOLLOWING A CHARACTER’