20 Facts About Sybil Connolly

Sybil Connolly was a celebrated fashion designer and global icon known for her innovative use of traditional Irish textiles in haute couture.

Sybil Connolly's activities were covered in both the fashion press and the social columns of publications such as the Hollywood Reporter.

Sybil Veronica Connolly was born on Clanllienwen Road, in Morriston, Swansea, Wales.

Sybil Connolly's education came largely from her Welsh grandfather and private tutors.

Sybil Connolly's father died while she was a teenager, and the family moved to Waterford, where she spent two years at the local Our Lady of Mercy School, on Military Road.

Sybil Connolly returned to Ireland in 1940, where she worked for the Dublin store Richard Alan.

Sybil Connolly remained unknown to the general public, for the next thirteen years, until she replaced the French-Canadian head designer Gaston Mallet in 1953.

Sybil Connolly was invited by Jack Clarke to produce the next season's range.

Sybil Connolly was known already for her textiles, including the crystal pleated linen that was said to take nine yards of material for each yard of finished cloth.

Sybil Connolly capitalised on this publicity by travelling with her collection to the US later the same year, where she made another life-long friend, Eleanor Lambert, doyenne of American fashion publicists.

Sybil Connolly officially launched her couture label in 1957; she was 36.

Sybil Connolly was made part of the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1965.

Sybil Connolly broadened her export market via a friendship with the newspaper magnate Frank Packer, with two heavily publicised visits to Australia in October 1954 and August 1957.

Sybil Connolly took the red flannel traditionally used for petticoats in Connemara and turned it into huge billowing peasant skirts.

Sybil Connolly made one skirt out of men's linen handkerchiefs, and in 1954 a summer dress out of striped linen tea towels, called the "Kitchen Fugue", leading her to be praised by Bazaar as someone with an "intuitively facile hand".

Designs were created in Ireland, and Sybil Connolly employed up to 100 women, mostly crocheting and weaving in their own homes.

The First Love dress was made in the Clarke's Richard and Alan shop in 58 Grafton Street, Dublin, where Sybil Connolly worked for more than 10 years.

In 1953 Sybil Connolly had only very recently begun designing dresses for the business.

In 1991, Sybil Connolly received an honorary doctoral degree from the National University of Ireland.

In 2012, Sybil Connolly's work attracted renewed interest when actor Gillian Anderson wore a vintage dress by the designer for the BAFTAs.