Latest news with #Dundrum
Irish Times
19 hours ago
- Lifestyle
- Irish Times
Between the sheets glamour: Helen McAlinden on how to make your bed summer ready
Belfast native Helen McAlinden is a fan of natural fabrics, particularly in the bedroom. As a designer of the home range for Irish heritage brand Foxford for almost 20 years, she uses its new linen bedding in her own home, a sea-facing terrace in Blackrock. It comes in three stonewashed colours: a soft sunrise pink; an aqua green that is the colour of the Irish Sea; and a gentle glare-free white. It gives a look of casual ease, she says. 'It's not trying too hard but yet it looks really sophisticated. It's light to sleep under, cool in summer and warm in winter, and you don't need to iron it. I don't want to iron or pay someone to iron for me.' It uses Irish flax that is woven in Guimarães, northeast of Porto in Portugal – a region known for its weaving – and dries faster than cotton. Its long fibres make it smooth to the touch and give it tensile strength, she says. 'It's also low maintenance. You just wash it and hang it out on the line.' READ MORE Foxford's new shop in Dundrum Town Centre Now you can see and touch this bedding range in the new Foxford shop in Dundrum Town Centre, as well as other outlets such as Arnotts, where Mags Fitzgibbon is the brand manager. 'One thing Foxford has always had is distribution in the tourist industry, but it is more than that, it is a lifestyle brand,' says McAlinden. Indeed, its throws drape beds in ultra-luxe hotels such as Ballynahinch Castle and Ashford Castle and have found their way on to overseas hotel beds, including the Cornwall-based Hotel Tresanton, part of the Polizzi Collection. In addition to bed linen and throws, Foxford can supply almost all bedding needs, except the mattress, she says. For that she opts for a King Koil design, made in Ireland. Pure linen blush pink duvet set; double €289, king €319 and super king €355 She then layers her bed, starting with a mattress cover, made in Co Mayo for Foxford. A fitted bottom sheet is her foundation garment. Foxford's new linen range has a generous depth of 40cm so it will fit any mattress height and stops you having to wrestle with the base to try to get the bedding over the mattress corners. She also insists on luxuriating under a top sheet, a touch that works in summer, on hot nights. Then it's a featherlight duvet. Her main bedroom is bedecked in the aqua colourway, for it works with the warm grey of the walls, painted in Athena 858 by Benjamin Moore, and the seascapes of Dublin Bay that she can see from her home in Blackrock. The colours work with the animated greys and greens of the water breaking below. Her down duvet is Danish band Danica. 'I spent €300 on it when I didn't have €300, bought it in Copenhagen airport and carried it home as hand luggage. It's the only thing I can sleep under.' On the nights when there's a chill in the air, she adds a honeycomb waffle 100 per cent cotton throw, €139, also Foxford. Helen McAlinden's guest bedroom with linen white Lumi print, waffle bedspread and Foxford cushions. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw The feather and down pillows are part of Foxford's bedding range, made in Mayo. She opts for the empire-size, two of which will fit across her super-king bed. 'It is an Irish-designed bed.' The new collection, launching in the autumn, will feature additional colours, including a denim blue, a deep inky green, a mauve and nacre, a pearlescent colour. There will also be stripes, fresh takes on toile de jouy, and contemporary checks for the Christmas market. The brand also offers a 400-thread count boxed cotton bedding set that can be customised with monogrammed embroidery or another such message, a great wedding gift to give. A well dressed bed Easy ways to ensure your bed is well dressed, according to Mags Fitzgibbon, brand manager for Foxford at Arnotts Pillows should fit the width of the bed. If you sleep on a king-size bed buy king size pillows, which measure 50cm by 90cm instead of the standard 50cm by 75cm. This will fill in the gap in the centre of the bed. Continental pillows, 65cm squares, can be used to dress the bed. They also prop you up if you like to read or watch TV in bed. Mattress depths vary. There are about 10 different depths available. Before buying new fitted sheets, measure the depth of your mattress, to include any other layers; toppers, covers or electric blankets that will add to its height. Sales staff can then direct you to the brands that do those sizes. A flat sheet or top sheet has two purposes. It cuts down on how often you have to launder your duvet cover, and it adds a layer that feels silky to sleep under. When choosing a duvet, pick a size up from the size of the bed it will cover. Lay a king-size duvet on a double bed, for example, and so on. It gives a better look to the bed and hides part or all of the divan sides. It also gives enough cover to accommodate two people. The standard pillowcase with an inside flap, also known as the housewife, is so-called as it was developed in the 1880s by the Housewives Co-operative in Bolton to keep the pillowcase in place. Before that pillowcases were simple sleeves. Oxford pillowcases have the same internal dimensions as the housewife, but have an external edging. Bedding trends Vesteroy mattress, Ikea The pocket-springs in the Vesteroy mattress have been designed to respond independently to each other, meaning you can have a great night's sleep regardless of whether your partner tosses and turns. The springs also allow air to circulate whilst you sleep. From €318 at . Curve appeal Rimel bedside table, La Redoute Rimel is a lacquered metal bedside table that comes in two colour options, the teal, pictured and a bone white. It stands 61.5cm high and has a circumference of 48cm, with a rattan top covered with tempered glass and a secret storage. €234.99 from . Baby pink Joules Thornton bed, DFS Joules Thornton king-size bedframe, €1,625, exclusive to DFS, comes in a blue stripe, floral or pink, to order. Tropical taste Fia rectangular cushion, Harvey Norman This velvet feather filled cushion, Fia, 40cm by 60cm, €58, also comes in 58cm squares, €75. The print will add a taste of the tropics to summer nights. Frill seeking Birdie striped duvet cover set The French Bedroom Company This Birdie pistachio and petal coloured, frill-edged duvet cover and matching pillowcases set is a frivolous way to bring the trend for stripes into the boudoir. About €84 excluding delivery and charges from . Mood lighting Rechargeable wireless lamp, This white gold confetti-effect glass lamp, €59, from , looks good and is wireless and rechargeable. Secret storage Bedside table, JYSK This bedside table in natural oak has tambour doors to hide all your bits, €100, Statement lamp Favour lamp, Pieces This Favour lamp has a powdercoated steel frame and an acrylic shade, €105, from . Barefoot luxury Maze rug by Kukoon, at EZ Living A rug underfoot softens the feel of timber floors. This Maze design by Irish company Kukoon is available at EZ Living Interiors, €120 for a 120cm by 170cm size.
Irish Times
27-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- Irish Times
Refreshed Modernist-style terraced home in Dundrum for €900,000
Address : 38 Ailesbury Lawn, Dundrum, Dublin 16 Price : €900,000 Agent : Sherry FitzGerald Dundrum View this property on Tucked away at the end of a quiet estate off Dundrum's Ballinteer Road is an enclave of spacious single-storey Modernist-stlyle terraced homes. They are essentially pairs of C-shaped homes built around a central courtyard, designed and built in the late 1960s. Number 38 Ailesbury Lawn was thoroughly renovated in 2020, building on the work of a previous owner, who was an architect. It is a beautiful, four-bed, two-bath property bursting with character and flair. It is on the market through Sherry Fitzgerald, seeking €900,000. Pops of subtle colour adorn every room without exception, but a clever symmetry of style in terms of flooring and new windows anchor the multitude of colours used by the owners, ensuring a relaxed and harmonious vibe throughout the home. Kitchen Sittingroom Dining area Utility Bootroom The front door and entrance hall are to the side of the 141sq m (1,517sq ft) house, off a long driveway laid with pebbles. Hedging and planting to the front of the house add privacy, but one could imagine a busy household using the entrance in the utility room, that opens into a bootroom. READ MORE Three of the four bedrooms and a family bathroom are to the front of the property, and each bedroom has been redecorated in Farrow & Ball colours. Wood panelling is used to great effect throughout the bedrooms, and the family bathroom is tiled in a sea-green Zellige-style (glazed-effect) tile. An internal courtyard divides the two parts of the house and an internal corridor connects them. Just off the courtyard and benefiting from a huge picture window that floods it with light is the sittingroom. The owners installed herringbone oak flooring and a slate-tile surround around the fireplace here; the fire is gas. The Ber is C3 and there is underfloor heating beneath the large grey stone tile in the rest of the living area. Main bedroom Bedroom Bedroom Garden room Garden bedroom A long, large kitchen with green units and oak worktops lies off the sittingroom, with the bootroom and utility connected to it. White tiles brighten the kitchen, which features built-in bench seating, backed by a large mirror that brings the garden views into the kitchen. To the left of the kitchen, overlooking the garden and with double doors opening on to it, is a superb garden room. It is employed as a spacious home office but would make a great second sittingroom or teenage hangout. Bathroom Garden At the end of the house is the nicest bedroom in the house, along with a guest bathroom, tiled in a pretty dusky pink. The bedroom is a fabulous room, with built-in wardrobes painted a pale blue, painted panelling behind the bed, a large roof light and a picture window looking out on to the garden. The garden is lovely, filled with interesting trees and plants including a cherry blossom, multi-stem amelanchier, acer and fatsia Japonicas. Facing southwest, it gets plenty of sun during the day and well into the evening. Moving on to another renovation project, the owners will miss the proximity to Dundrum village and town centre, not to mention the Luas green line, which whisks them into the city centre for work in about 20 minutes.
Irish Times
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Rhasidat Adeleke on life in the spotlight: ‘How do people like Beyoncé handle this? This is crazy!'
She's still only 22. It's easy to forget that about Rhasidat Adeleke . Fourth at the Olympics , fourth at the World Championships , silver medal at the Europeans. Relay medals a-go-go, more Irish records than anybody in the sport. And she's still only 22. Sometimes, she forgets herself. Like when she was at home last October and decided one day to go to Dundrum Town Centre with her friends. That's what you do, isn't it? You haven't been home in a while and you've just had the biggest summer of your life. So you go and hang with your girls, you laugh and shop and gossip and let your other world blur out of focus for a bit. Except, when you're Adeleke, your other world doesn't be long surrounding you. Walking around Dundrum that day, she was hit up for selfies and signatures at every turn. In her innocence, she hadn't expected it to happen. It wasn't unpleasant or anything. Just a surprise, somehow. 'I was stopped by like 50 people and had a bunch of people around me asking for pictures and autographs and stuff,' she says. 'It's insane because I just went to Dundrum as I normally would. But I almost forget that I have, I guess, some sort of presence now. It's really cool. It honestly is really cool. READ MORE 'In comparison, being out here in Austin, Texas, where I can just walk around freely, nobody really knows who I am. So it kind of makes me forget that I do have that presence back home. But yeah, it's a blessing.' Well, yes, up to a point. But you're allowed to be 22, as well. You're allowed to have a day with your friends that is yours and theirs and yours and theirs alone. You're allowed to feel a little uncomfortable if that small and infrequent experience gets eroded by the love bombing of the general public. 'Honestly, I have a different viewpoint on that,' she says. 'Okay, it sometimes depends on what mood I'm in. But usually, I don't have a problem with it because I just want to appreciate it. I don't want to ever seem like I'm ungrateful, even though having an opposing view wouldn't necessarily mean that I'm ungrateful. Rhasidat Adeleke in the Diamond League women's 400m at Slaski Stadium in Chorzow, Poland in in August 2024. Photograph: Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images 'But if someone wants a picture with me or an autograph, then they appreciate what I do. And I'm like, the least I can do to give back to them for supporting me is to give them an autograph or to take a picture with them because it doesn't cost me anything. 'Sometimes it definitely can be overwhelming. I think the most overwhelmed I felt was at the national championships in Santry last year. That was insane. I was like, 'How do people like Beyoncé handle this? This is crazy!' 'They were telling us that it was the highest turnout they've ever had at nationals. And it was so unreal to break the 100m record at it. That was the last national record I was going for and to do it in front of a home crowd that big – it was a top-three moment in my life.' Adeleke is talking via a video call organised through her partnership with Celsius, the energy drink. Having turned professional in the summer of 2023, she is still picking her way through a world in which she is both a sprinter and a business. [ Rhasidat Adeleke takes second spot in Diamond League 200m with storming finish Opens in new window ] Prize money on the track circuit is decent without being amazing – her second place in the Diamond League a fortnight ago in Shanghai was worth $6,000 (€5,355). Not bad for 22.72 seconds' work, but she won't run in the Diamond League again until the end of June. So by necessity, the life comes with endorsements as an anchor tenant. How does she choose which ones to lend her name to and which to send back? 'Authenticity is number one,' she says. 'I would never work with a brand that I wouldn't personally use or a drink that I wouldn't drink. I just think it just does me a disservice and I want to make sure I'm staying true to myself and my beliefs, my morals and values. 'I think as sports people, we're really now able to understand our brand being beyond sport and being beyond what we do on the track. And almost trying to capitalise off that because we're not going to be athletes forever. So it's really important to be able to find a way to steer into your other interests, even while doing your sports, at least to set you up for when you're done. Team Ireland's Sophie Becker, Rachel McCann, Sharlene Mawdsley and Rhasidat Adeleke after the Women's 4x400m relay qualifying round two during day two of the World Athletics Relays in Guangzhou, China, on May 11th, 2025. Photograph:for World Athletics 'So for me, lifestyle, beauty, fashion – these are things that I'm really fond of. And when it comes to collaborating with different companies, it's more so looking towards partnerships that I actually have an interest in. I think that's more authentic than trying to force something that is just being given to me. It's how you express yourself beyond what people see on the track. 'It's hard for people to really understand who I am and who we as athletes are because they see us at our most competitive forms. When we're displaying peak athleticism, we're not going to be showcasing the large extent of our personalities. So through these opportunities, through branding, through marketing, that's how we can actually show people who we are. 'As an athlete, we definitely have to watch out for what we put in our body. It's all important. And compared to a lot of other energy drinks, Celsius stood out in the ingredients and what the benefits are.' This is her day-to-day, out in the big bad world. She graduated from the University of Texas in May of last year with a degree in Corporate Communications. College was the only American life she'd known and though she kept the same coach and still trains in Austin alongside Julien Alfred and Dina Asher-Smith, adult life is not student life. Even when you're only 22. 'It was definitely interesting,' she says of the transition. 'At first I was like, 'Okay, this is great! I don't have school, I can just train and figure out what I'm going to do for the rest of the day.' Just kind of chill. But I think I'm someone who thrives off structure. So having to create my own structure for the first couple of months was kind of hard. [ Rhasidat Adeleke came for an Olympic medal - the hurt of missing out will fuel her until she gets one Opens in new window ] 'I'm still trying to figure out, trying to see what's going to work for me. At least now we have competitions, which include a lot of travel and then recovery. So that takes a lot of my time now. But trying to figure that out this past autumn when we weren't competing was harder.' To occupy herself, she did a fair bit of reading, a lot of TV binge-watching, got into playing Topgolf of all things. She wanted to start a new pastime, maybe sign up for a class here and there. But a lot of what she was into demanded more of her attention than she was willing to slice off from the thing that matters most. She was thinking in terms of the odd drop-in session, not a full-blown new life departure. Rhasidat Adeleke celebrates finishing second in the women's 4x400m relay final at the European Athletics Championships 2024 in Rome. Photograph:'I really was going to pick up a hobby or take some classes,' she says. 'Like maybe learn Spanish or tailoring or something I would be into. But the way that those classes were structured, it was almost like an overcommitment. They needed you to be in your seat at 9am every day. I was like, 'Okay, that's not gonna work.' 'So after this competition season is over, I need to figure out what's going to work out for me. I know for sure that basing my whole week on track practice isn't going to work. I thought at the start that if every day was, 'prepare for training, go to training, come home and recover', it would make me so much better. But I think I got into a place where I wasn't doing anything other than training. So I need to figure out that balance again for the future.' As we chat, it's Wednesday morning in Texas and the jetlag from China still has her in its grip. She went to bed on Tuesday at 6pm, woke up at one in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep. There's a 13-hour time difference to recalibrate. It will take a while to escape its orbit. It was a successful trip, all in all. She went to Shanghai first, where she came second in that 200m race at the Diamond League. Then it was onto Hong Kong to link up with the rest of the Ireland relay squad before they all decamped to Guangzhou for the World Relays. [ Ireland women's 4x400m relay team seal World Championships qualification in Guangzhou Opens in new window ] A year ago, they went to the Bahamas for the same event and won bronze in the mixed relay , breaking new ground and revelling wide-eyed in the novelty of it all. There was a different vibe about it this time around. They went to Guangzhou to attend to business. They got in and got out and got two teams qualified for the World Championships – the women's 4x400m and the mixed 4x400m. Adeleke didn't run in the mixed relay final, neither did Sharlene Mawdsley or Sophie Becker . This wasn't about the podium. At least not the one in Guangzhou. 'The Bahamas was a totally different experience last year,' she says. 'For one, it was an Olympic year, so that Olympic qualification was really necessary, right? That was probably the only opportunity that we were going to have to run as a team together at such a high level . . . The level of competition was way higher. All the other countries brought their A-list athletes. It was an Olympic year so everything was really hyped up the whole year. Rhasidat Adeleke is interviewed after winning the women's 400m dash during the Outdoor Track and Field Championship in June 2023 in Austin, Texas. Photograph: Jamie Schwaberow/NCAA Photos via Getty Images 'But this year it was more about going in, getting a qualification and heading out. We didn't make it into some monumental equation – it was just World Relays. We did everything very strategically. 'For example, last year I ran the women's relay and an hour later I ran the mixed relay. And the next day I came back and ran again! Because we had to do it, we had to make sure we got that Olympic qualification. But this year it was more about just getting the job done and then getting ready for the rest of the season.' Everything about 2025 is different from the way she went about 2024. She skipped the indoor season entirely. Heroics weren't needed to negotiate the World Relays so she didn't try to provide them. Between her coach Edrick Floréal and herself, they have been building her body steadily through the winter and spring, adding layer upon layer to sustain her for longer through the season. 'My coach is very focused on us achieving our targets at the World Championships in September. By the time it came to September last year, I was so burnt out physically and mentally. We had just been go, go, go, go, go. The base that I had was wearing away. So what my coach decided to do was more so keep the base going, keep doing that groundwork and then we'll sharpen up close to the championships. 'I've run three times this season so far and each time I was like, 'Oh my God, I feel very different. I don't feel as sharp. I don't feel as quick. I feel sluggish.' And my coach is trying to remind me: 'Ray, you're not trying to break the world record right now. Focus on the goal.' 'So it's definitely a process. It's very different to how I used to be at this time of year. But I'm trusting him because what he says is, you know, I missed out on a medal in Paris last year and in Budapest in 2023. So it's more just doing something different. It could be a risk but you have to take risks sometimes to achieve your goals.' And so the year lies before her. She will be in Europe for some Diamond League events towards the end of next month and will keep building through the summer towards Tokyo in September. The women's 400m has turned into one of the deepest events on the track – her Irish record of 49.07 will likely have to fall if she's going to take a medal. That's fine. If that's what it takes, that's what it takes. Adeleke will work towards it, gradually, methodically, relentlessly. This is the life she wanted. She's 22 and the possibilities are endless. ♦ Rhasidat Adeleke is an ambassador for Celsius Energy Drinks.
