The man with a passion for fashion, Rob- ert O'Byrne, is feted and hugged by a dozen designers. Some line up to shake the hand of he who has penned after a fashion, a history of Irish fashion over the past 50 years, and the accompanying RTE series. The creme de la creme of the rag trade at the posh launch at Club Lobo in the Morrison Hotel includes Lainey Keogh, Richard Lewis, John Rocha, Mary O'Donnell, Ib Jorgenson, Louise Kennedy, Patrick Howard, Liz Quin and Carolyn Donnelly, Michael Mortell, Cuan Hanly and Neilli Mulcahy. "I get propositioned quite a lot but I rarely say yes," O'Byrne explains to the gathering. But, he continues, when the series producers David and Tina Heffernan came to him with an idea to look at Irish fashion: "This time, I said yes".
And he's even giving dancing lessons to dancer Jean Butler, who is just back from New York's Radio City Music Hall and a sell-out run of the show Dancing on Dangerous Ground. As they lock arms, she quickly shows him her tango steps and O'Byrne smiles, happy with her progress. Yes, he admits, he did demonstrate the tango, (privately, of course) to Jean and her dancing partner, Colin Dunne, after his return from Buenos Aires where he studied the dance himself last year. Also checking out the threads at the fash bash is Ghanain Adekunle Gomez, director of the Dublin-based African Cultural Project, who was a tailor "in another life". But, hey, once a tailor always a tailor, we always say.