Jean Pull
“The killing of Cecil was sickening, he was an iconic lion … Mary’s creations are breathtaking and to model this dress is a great honour,” mourned the headline of the 21 November 2018 Belfast Telegraph. Journalist Leona O’Neill reported, “When Cecil the lion was shot and killed in Zimbabwe by American millionaire dentist Walter Palmer in the summer of 2015, it sparked worldwide condemnation. Many took to social media to vent their fury but London fashion designer Mary Martin went one step further and channelled her anger over the senseless death into creating a stunning dress that was then modelled by a Northern Irish animal rights activist.”
Janice Blakley is Chair of Grovehill Animal Trust, a cat and dog shelter in rural County Tyrone. Mary Martin established her eponymous fashion empire based in London over a decade ago. Lissan House outside Cookstown in County Tyrone isn’t the most likely place for these two worlds to collide but there’s a continuity of female power history: its last owner Hazel Dolling kept the place going singlehandedly and set up a Trust to open it to the public after the death. Oh, and the house is ridiculously photogenic – the atmosphere seeps into the photographs.
“It’s a very intricate design full of symbolism like all my dresses,” explains Mary. “Layers of black tulle around the neck and shoulders represent the mane of the lion. I’ve used black sparkling silk for the body of the dress as a reminder of the starlit open sky of Zimbabwe, the last thing Cecil would have seen as he lay dying. God’s creation is intrinsic to all my work.” Mary is well versed in diversity and anti adversity and versatility so she chose a half century year old woman as the ideal 21st century model.
Mary Martin is also heavily involved in charity work. This year alone she has been honoured with the Cultural Impact accolade at the London Fashion Awards and named as one of Africa’s Top 200 Most Influential Women. She was coronated as a Diaspora Queen Mother in Ghana for teaching children to sew and make clothes in schools and orphanages.
The Lion Dress may be one of Mary’s best known creations but why settle for one design when you can have several suitcases full? Once fully ensconced in Lissan House, Janice twirls around a bedroom, runs down a corridor and drinks tea in a ballroom donned in The Floral Dress, The Green Dress, The Black Queen Dress … This story was picked up by a raft of publications and even now social media posts still appear on this memorable meeting of an international fashion artist with an Irish animal rights advocate.
Mary isn’t participating in fashion art; she’s reframing it. Janice isn’t doing a campaign shoot; she’s an anti shooting campaigner.
