Eavan Boland’s poem Shadow Doll describes the dress, the colours, and the veils of a bride-to-be as she conforms to the conventional expectations of feminine beauty. “And now in summary and neatly sewn/a porcelain bride in an airless glamour; the shadow doll survives its occasion.”
It came to mind when Ruth Ní Loinsigh sent these images, taken to showcase Om Diva’s vintage silk, satin and lace, as well as her new Irish design jewellery – “very ethereal and a little bit fey”, she says.
The collection was launched to run alongside the release of Donncha Gilmore’s new film Girls and Boys, his debut as a director, which tells the story of a rugby jock and a trans woman who meet at a student party. The film features two of Dublin’s rising stars in film – Liath Hannon who plays the lead, and Francis O’Mahony her best friend.
Hannon, O’Mahony and textile artist Orla Murphy who styled the shoot also happen to be part-time Divas working in the Drury Street shop. “I have always seen Om Diva as a cross pollination of creative talents, and this was a way to bring them together to display the collection,” Ní Loinsigh says.
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“The concept is an observation on childhood friendship, and those early bonds which inform our relationship, which also happens to run parallel to one of the themes of the film.”
Girls and Boys premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh in July, and was joint winner of Best Independent Film. Donald Clarke in this paper described it as “a nifty romantic drama, a beguiling film working wonders with its contemporary variation on Montague & Capulet – it just about gets away with the sort of unlikely midstory reversal you’d expect from a l9th-century sensation novel”. The film, which was also screened as part of the GAZE Film Festival in August, will go on general release in September.
The clothes featured here – slip dresses, lace negligees and black chiffon gowns – are light, feminine and pale, from Om Diva’s Victorian Romance collection, grounded with knee-high boots and accessorised with pearls, bangles, gold vermeil bracelets, hoop earrings and vintage rings. The images were shot on location in Henrietta Street and in the grounds of the Registry of Deeds Office by Saoirse McAllorum, an Irish-Finnish visual artist and photographer who uses her background in dance to create expressive movements and a strong sense of narrative.
