Exquisite

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...

Skip to content The recent Harvey Weinstein revelations have thrown up many questions about why society facilitates adult bullies and sexual predators. Blogger Laurie Morrissey looks at how we raise girls to be pleasing and why Big Business enables repeat offenders.... There’s a lot of talk about bullies these days. Bullies in the workplace, bullies in the playground.  Bullies from a...

  “A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste—it’s hearty, it’s healthy, it’s physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I’m against.” The inimitable words of the late Diana Vreeland, former editor in chief at Vogue (1963-71) who understood that style is all...

On wearing leopard print, Christian Dior warned his clients: ‘If you are fair and sweet, don’t wear it’.   Of all the patterns, leopard print is the most sassy, trashy, elegant, sexual, sexy, empowering and daring. From Taylor Swift's good girl gone bad leopard print dress in her new music video for 'Look What You Made Me Do' to supermodel Kate...

The majestic Kilronan Castle in Co Roscommon provided a fitting backdrop to a unique fashion shoot for Irish designer Catriona Hanly’s opulent creations. Exquisite.ie’s Aisling O’Loughlin was joined by actress Aoibhin Garrihy, model and art expert Ros Lipsett and models Taylor Digie and Lasma Kalnaja of Assets to showcase the autumn winter collection. Shot by photographer Eilish McCormick, the equestrian...

  Today marks the birthday of Grabrielle 'Coco' Chanel who was born on the 19th of August 1883 in Saumur, Maine-et-Loire in France. To celebrate one of fashion's greatest and most enduring designers, Exquisite.ie's Aisling O'Loughlin explores the seaside resort where the young Coco set up her first fashion boutique in 1913 before conquering the world.... You can see why Gabrielle...

It was the Irish born editor of the US edition of Harper’s Bazaar, Carmel Snow, who coined the phrase the New Look that trumpeted the arrival of Christian Dior’s bold new designs as Europe emerged bleary and broken from the ruins and atrocities of World War II. The silhouette was rather audacious considering the amount of material required following a...

Such an audacious act, the selfie. The bit that makes it so brazen is pressing the button and posting your mug for all to see and rate. The rest is understandable. Of course we’re curious about ourselves. What are we even doing here? Examining our faces, whether in admiration, disapproval or just plain interest, is to be expected considering...