Exquisite

Is social media turning us into a big bunch of uniformed, easily offended, pack mentality thicks? Probably. Unapologetic rabble-rouser Ricky Gervais certainly thinks Twitter and Facebook have much to answer for the demise of civilisation. “It’s more important to be popular than right,’ he tells the audience on his Humanity Tour. ‘In this post-truth era, people don’t care about...

He was expecting Hollywood superstar Katherine Hepburn but it was the other Hepburn, a doe-eyed, gamine beauty in cigarette pants, a t-shirt and sandals who Hubert de Givenchy greeted when she arrived to borrow clothes for her latest movie Sabrina in 1953. Funnily enough, Givenchy, who died this week aged 91, was a bit disappointed the ‘real deal’ hadn’t...

Listen, I’m all for equality but there are some elements to this new wave of feminism that I can only say #notmetoo. That whole women supporting women shtick that you hear repeated time and time again, what nonsense! Let’s flip it for a second. Imagine if men kept banging on about supporting each other, it would sound so off:...

Public spats: Never a good idea, always great entertainment. Social media means it’s too irresistible not to post your grievances for the world to witness, however unwelcome. Pre-Internet, it was commonly advised to pen a letter outlining your fury and then burn it ceremoniously. This was sound counsel. We should do more of that. Alas we don’t. We post...

Do you remember when Sunday was sacred? When the notion of shopping on the Seventh Day wasn’t even a consideration? How we have changed. I ran out of nappies in Lyon, France on a Sunday recently. Not for myself, for my baby Joe, one and half years old. It was the second time I’d been caught out in Lyon with...

Claire Brett, Dip. Herb., ND. Dublin Herbalists founder and creator tells Exquisite.ie all about the rise in clean beauty and how she became Ireland’s leading clean beauty creator... Herbalism and natural skin care is following in the footsteps of the organic food trends and becoming a vital condition for consumers. Since I started Dublin Herbalists in 2012 I have seen...

  There’s a new Barbie in town and she’s wearing a hijab to cover her head, chest and hair. The Mattel doll is based on American fencer and Olympic bronze medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad who was the first athlete to wear the controversial Muslim headscarf during the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Revealing her Mini-Me at the Glamour Women...

Irish designer Catríona Hanly’s love of luxury and opulence is no accident considering the grandeur she grew up in and is accustomed to thanks to the family owned hotels, Lough Rynn Castle in County Leitrim and Kilronan Castle in County Roscommon. This season the London based designer is celebrating the blouse in all its glory with some familiar faces...

  The fashion world has fallen for the austere beauty of The Handmaid’s Tale, the Emmy award winning TV series based on writer Margaret Atwood’s chilling depiction of a dystopian, not too distant future where women have lost all rights and are property of a totalitarian theocracy called Gilead, once the USA. Actress Elisabeth Moss plays Offred, a woman who...

My first instinct on seeing the the smooth stone donut shape creation of sculptor Helen O’Connell in Bray’s Mermaid Arts Centre is to embrace the Kilkenny limestone and feel it’s silky strength beneath my hands. I look up suddenly and ask, ‘Is it ok to touch the pieces?’. Helen grins, ‘That’s the biggest compliment I can get, that people...