Yahoo Lifestyle Designer Mary O’Donnell Dies at 91
The Irish-born designer Mary O’Donnell, who also established an American following, has died at the age of 91.
She-She O’Donnell, the designer’s niece, announced her death on social media on Jan. 26.
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Although O’Donnell became one of Ireland’s leading designers, she also catered to such high-profile clients as Princess Grace of Monaco, Ireland’s former president Mary Robinson, Ethel Kennedy and Ernest Hemingway’s fourth wife Mary, among others. O’Donnell learned how to spin wool, make clothes and knit at home as a child. By her own account, she was so adept that she could knit and read a book at the same time.
At 17, she left her home in Kilcar to travel to New York City to attend the Traphagen School of Design. To pay for her stay and her tuition, O’Donnell moonlighted as a waitress. She later went on to work for a few years at Mainbocher, a favorite house with notable style setters like the Duchess of Windsor Wallis Simpson and C.Z. Guest.
After returning to her homeland, O’Donnell started her fashion career in 1952 on Grafton Street for Sybil Connolly, who had trained as a dressmaker in London, before opening her namesake company in Dublin on Dawson Street. O’Donnell also had a boutique in New York years later. She also dabbled in costume design with the 1981 feature film “Lovespell” being among her credits.
In the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, O’Donnell became one of Ireland’s better-known designers along with Connolly, Irene Gilbert, Ib Jorgensen, Michelina Stacpoole and Neillí Mulcahy. They came of age at a time when the country was rife with social and political turmoil. (A few of them had attended the country’s first fashion academy, the Grafton Academy of Fashion Design, which was established in 1938.)
The Irish-born, New York-based interiors and fashion designer Clodagh Phipps, who is known as “Clodagh,” told WWD that she always looked up to O’Donnell. Describing her as “a lovely person, talented and kind,” Clodagh said they met in the ’60s. “Mary honored and celebrated Irish designers, plus the tweed and knitting industries worldwide. With her beautiful, serene fashion design, she thereby helped many artisans in the poorest areas in Ireland,” she said Thursday.
Through the decades, O’Donnell used traditional Irish materials like lace, wool, tweeds and crochet in her custom designs. For the embroidery and crochet that was featured in her intricate designs, she relied on a troupe of artists many of whom worked from their homes. Their handwork could be seen in the vibrant silk ribbons and crochet flowers that were threaded through her crochet skirts and dresses.
After establishing her company in Dublin, O’Donnell traveled regularly to the U.S., spending time with the Irish American community and befriending the Kennedy family, as well the 47th speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Tip O’Neill’s kin. In 1970, the designer presented her collection at a charity show in the home of then U.S. senator Ted Kennedy and his wife Joan, who was also a client.
High-waisted colorful long evening skirts with contrasting fitted tops, beaded chiffon cocktail gowns, a pleated yellow skirt with an Irish crocheted top and a blouse with mutton sleeves, a crochet vest and demure skirts were among her creations. The enterprising creative showed her 1969 spring collection stateside at the Irish American Cultural Institute dinner. Her design ethos was rooted in simplicity and quality, but her work highlighted how Ireland was keeping up with the global fashion trends of the ’60s, as evidenced by pants that she showed at that time.
Describing her aunt as “bold, creative, wild and free,” She-She O’Donnell said in her post that the designer once applied brown eyeliner to her teeth to deter an overly persistent admirer. WWD highlighted some of the more unexpected things that happened in O’Donnell’s career.
In 1979, a bomb was thrown from a moving car into the London building where the designer had a showroom, which was damaged along with the mannequins in her window display. But WWD noted that “No one suggested that the culprits, which were not yet apprehended, were objecting to the Longuette skirt and crochet blouse Mary was displaying in her window.”
During a 1980 visit to Marshall Field’s in Chicago for an in-store event, the designer told WWD that she wasn’t about to ring up the actor Richard Burton who was in town starring in “Camelot.” Having recently worked with him in Ireland for the shoot for “Lovespell,” which was based on “Tristan and Isolde,” O’Donnell told WWD that they had butted heads on location in Tipperay. While celebrating one night with 20 cast members, O’Donnell sang an Irish melody, but Burton ordered actor Nicholas Clay off a bar stool and bombed, “I’m bored with all this singing.”
O’Donnell had said that she shot back, “Well, I didn’t think I was going to see God until I died, but here he is and have a good look at him.” When Burton countered, “Madame, your syntax leaves a lot to be desired,” she said she responded, “I think I speak very clearly. But if I had as many elocution lessons as you, I might be looking like a Mr. Jenkins [a reference to Burton’s original name.]”
Burton later apologized, but O’Donnell said still considered him a bit arrogant. O’Donnell used her creative spirit in the Chicago store for a pageant with her embroidered clothing, dance and narration inspired by Yeats poetry. She also met with private clients and boutiques.
After closing her Dublin store in 1983, O’Donnell divided her time between Ireland and the U.S., where she had maintained clients. After retiring in 1995, O’Donnell returned to her family home in Kilcar and more recently she rented a home outside the village and kept largely to herself.
The names of O’Donnell’s survivors were not immediately known.
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