Just saying

Sonya Lennon

Sonya Lennon, 55, is a fashion designer, broadcaster, entrepreneur and the founder of WorkEqual.

She lives in Dublin with her partner and twins.

My childhood was kind of ridiculously lovely to be honest. I grew up in Malahide, my dad worked in the bank, my mum was a transatlantic air hostess. It was myself and my sister who’s six years my junior. No therapy, no residual issues.

My NCAD portfolio perished in a tragic fire along with, more importantly, six people in Loreto College on St Stephen’s Green in 1986. It was horrendous for the loss of life. But one of the minor symptoms of it was that I had no portfolio to present to art college. So I missed that stop and took a different path.

I didn’t pay much attention at school. I didn’t study very hard. If I had applied myself I could probably have done really well, but I just wanted to go to NCAD to study fashion design. My parents felt it was a career I’d have a very small percentage of success at, but they didn’t say no either.

Fear of change held me back for a while. As a stylist I was working in Dublin, had a lovely life, met my partner. But in the pit of my stomach I knew I should probably be going to London. I knew I had both the personality and the talent to give it a go. But I was afraid. And I was comfortable, I didn’t really want to move. I don’t have any regrets about that. When RTÉ asked ifI’d present Off the Rails, that was a big risk. I had lovely clients, and was doing music videos, TV commercials, campaigns. When I moved to RTÉ, we started in June 2008, just as the economic crash happened. All the revenue I would’ve made from commercials evaporated.

Styling can be therapy. There’s styling a human, with living, breathing emotions who has thoughts about how they should look, baggage about their body, about their image. You’re supporting that person to feel good about themselves as they are. When it comes to commercial styling, you’re using clothes to tell a story. Either they have a huge role in that story or they’re successful if you don’t notice them.

My partner Dave and I are two fiercely independent units who work very well together. We met when we worked together at dSide [magazine], he was art director and I was fashion editor. Our twins are now 19 so we’re a house with four adults in it. It’s really lovely.

Having twins as babies was brutal. I don’t even remember the first year. I had an utter mental breakdown when they were a year old, it was almost like, well, I haven’t killed them, so now maybe I’ll take a moment to have a little breakdown. I remember going, “I’m doing this all on my own, I don’t know what I’m doing”. My family were helping, but they were also terrified of two tiny infants. Dave was always brilliant. My friend Donna told me years later that she flew home from London and lived with us for a few weeks at the beginning and I didn’t even remember.

One of my groups of friends is called The Lalas – we’re all tiny with big knockers and like dancing. We’re glued together with sea swimming, dancing, having fun, culture. Last night we made a decision to go for a night swim, and Evie, my daughter, came with us. Myself and Evie driving back home, listening to Beyoncé... I thought this is just gold. It doesn’t get any better .

Dublin in the 1990s was brilliant. Dave and I were 10 years together in the height of hedonism before

I got pregnant. We had the best time. He was working for MCD so we had access to gigs while I was styling music videos. We were on private planes going to music festivals. I remember opening up Time Out magazine, which had a big article about Dublin and there’s me and my fellow Lalas in The Kitchen nightclub in the Clarence, giving it socks.

I was effectively running three start-ups at the same time.

Dress for Success, as it was before it became WorkEqual, Frock Advisor and the Lennon Courtney label, with Brendan Courtney. Lennon Courtney was bootstrapped – we self-funded it, I still don’t know how – but took funding for Frock Advisor. We’d offices in London and Dublin. The pressure of that... I was pretty obsessed about the success of it so when we decided to close Frock Advisor, it was horrendous – but ultimately a huge relief. I’ll never put myself under that kind of pressure again. Failure, which is what it was effectively, has value if you can take learnings from it. I really value my life and my headspace and my happiness and my family and my friends, and the space that the current structure of my life affords me.

Since I started HRT I feel on top of the world again. My energy levels dipped when

I was at the beginning of my menopause journey. I’m 55 now and work very hard on my fitness. Somebody said to me on Instagram once, “Where do you get the energy to work out every day?” I get the energy because I work out every day.

I don’t worry any more. I’ve kind of trained myself out of it. Because it’s a bit of a wasted energy, like regret

I don’t worry about the future. I’m saying that as somebody who has just been in to visit her mother who has very progressive dementia. I have no control over my future health, except build my own personal insurance policy – my fitness, nutrition, mental health. Do I sit around worrying am I going to get dementia? No. It’s a possibility. But I don’t worry any more. I’ve kind of trained myself out of it. Because it’s a bit of a wasted energy, like regret. What’s the point? It’s gone.

Lennon Courtney is available now at Kilkenny Design. kilkennydesign.com