By Donal Fallon
In Irish museum settings, clothing most often takes the form of military uniforms, but fashion has its place too. At the Collins Barracks site of the National Museum of Ireland, a dedicated space explores Ib Jorgensen’s unique contribution to Irish and international fashion, while The Way We Wore explores Irish clothing manufacturing through the ages. When New York’s Museum of Modern Art displayed ‘111 of the most iconic fashion garments and accessories over the last century’, they looked to Castlebar’s Museum of Country Life to provide a 1940 Aran jumper, which took its place alongside a Birkin bag and an early prototype pair of Levi’s 501 jeans.
More often overlooked are costumes, an important piece of theatrical and cinematic history, which are sometimes contained within the archives of theatres and production companies. At the Newbridge Silverware–Museum of Style Icons, a new exhibition allows the public to see costumes linked to significant moments in recent Irish cinematic history.
Art historian Marketa Uhlirova has noted that ‘cinema histories have for the most part regarded fashion and costume as essentially foreign and irrelevant—as too superfluous, frivolous and ephemeral to be worthy of serious investigation’. There have been notable exceptions to this: the Victoria and Albert Museum has collected significant film costumes alongside its work in chronicling stage fashion and design. A visitor there can see Fred Astaire’s suit from Shall We Dance, and the impressive hat of Admiral Horatio Nelson worn by Laurence Olivier in 1941’s Lady Hamilton.
At home, the Irish Costume Archive Project was established by Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh and Veerle Dehaene in 2017, building a collection that already stands at over 200 artefacts. While primarily concerned with productions of recent times, it includes earlier items such as a hat worn by John Wayne in 1952’s The Quiet Man. Both founders have a background as leading costume practitioners and in costume design, ensuring an awareness of the materials and their preservation.
While committed to building a digital archive, exhibitions have also been a part of the project, and the Newbridge Silverware Visitor Centre marks a perfect location. Some readers may recall the Ireland at the Movies exhibition from the archive in the Little Museum of Dublin in 2015, but the growth in the scale of the archive is clearly visible in this larger space.
This museum has clearly found a niche for itself, housing and hosting fashion collections. A frequent source of collaboration has been with the auction-house world, offering the Irish public a (free) glimpse of collections like that of Elizabeth Taylor and Olivia Newton John before high-profile auctions from Beverly Hills-based Julien’s Auctions. Many items in the museum come from the collection of Newbridge Silverware themselves, who acquired a dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in 1963’s Charade and gradually continued to acquire similar pieces. Marilyn Monroe (an evening jacket from 1957’s The Prince and the Showgirl), Judy Garland (a satin wedding dress from 1948’s The Pirate) and Princess Diana are all represented within the growing collection. Menswear is rarer, but suits from ‘D.A. Millings and Son, Old Compton Street’, are certainly a unique thing to see. Made of grey wool and mohair, they were worn by the Beatles on the promotional tour for A Hard Day’s Night. The only thing that binds most of the permanent and eclectic collection is that it is all important in the story of fashion in the broadest terms.
Iconic Costumes of the Irish Silver Screen brings together a significant sample of the collections of the Irish Costume Archive Project, with films as recent as the Academy Award-nominated An Cailín Ciúin and Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin given prominence. On the day I visited, Irish eyes were drawn towards the small yellow dress (the only costume not made for an adult actor), but international visitors were instead drawn to the more elaborate costumes. One of the most striking costumes is the National Army uniform of General Michael Collins, created by Sandy Powell for Neil Jordan’s 1996 biopic. A frequent collaborator with Jordan, Powell also worked on The Butcher Boy and The Crying Game, but nothing surpassed Michael Collins at the Irish box office for Jordan. A particularly cynical journalist told readers then that ‘we already have the Yeats industry and the Joyce industry—stand by for the Collins industry. While it may never reach the stock-exchange quotation proportions of the first two mentioned, the Collins industry should do well for the next few years.’
Some costumes tell broader stories than fashion and design and are testament to the strength of the developing Irish film industry. From designer Charles Knode comes a costume from 1995’s Braveheart, the most expensive film to be made in Ireland and which was only possible thanks to new tax incentives and the efforts of Michael D. Higgins, then minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, to convince Mel Gibson to make the film here. An entertaining short documentary on the YouTube page of the Irish Defence Forces provides an oral history from some soldiers who worked as extras on the production. Only one feature film was made in Ireland in 1992, but Higgins transformed the landscape entirely, in recognition of which he was awarded the Outstanding Contribution to Irish Film and Television Award in 2014.
More than just demonstrating that film production in Ireland is in a healthy position, this exhibition also shows the strong re-emergence of heritage textile industries. Readers of GQ magazine were told of The Banshees of Inisherin that ‘these are easily some of the best sweaters to ever grace the silver screen’, while the New York Times ran a feature piece on Delia Barry, ‘the octogenarian who knitted Colin Farrell’s cozy sweaters’. There is considerable pride that many of these costumes were actually made in Ireland.
There is plenty of time to visit the exhibition, which runs until April 2025, though for those who can’t make it along to Newbridge the Irish Costume Archive Project website (www.icap.ie) offers the chance to view the collection digitally. Much is owed to historians like Kevin Rockett, Luke Gibbons and Ruth Barton, who have done such important work in explaining the birth and growth of Irish cinema. Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh and Veerle Dehaene bring something else to the field, saving an important part of its material culture for future generations.
Donal Fallon is a historian and the presenter of the ‘Three Castles Burning’ podcast.