Celia Holman Lee is a born and bred city girl, Limerick City to be exact. Sitting upstairs in No. 1 Pery Square Hotel, she points across the People’s Park to where she grew up on Carey’s Road.
Despite being a bona fide “townie”, the fashionista has a great affinity with the farming community, mostly through her work at the Ploughing Championships.
Every year the Holman Lee Agency hosts three fashion shows each day of the Ploughing. With 600 attendees at each, the agency sees its biggest crowds of the year there.
A true style icon, Celia brought her own fashion flair to farming. She is often credited with being the person who made colourful wellies cool in Ireland, the first to sport them through the Ploughing fields years ago.
“I got them in a hardware shop in Adare, I think it was,” muses Celia. “I will always remember it, they were pink with daisies on them. They were children’s shoes. I’m only a size six and they went up to a five and a half, so I bate my legs into them.”
“The reaction I got walking around was huge. For a few years then they started introducing stalls selling coloured wellies with bows and ribbons. Now of course it’s very cool, it’s all Hunters, real fancy ones. In our time it was all bows. I actually had two big pink bows on the side of mine one year.”
Look one: Celia Holman Lee at number one Pery Square, Limerick. \ David Ruffles
Look one: Celia Holman Lee at number one Pery Square, Limerick. \ David Ruffles
Breaking through
But, before Celia could become a trendsetter in the world of agriculture and beyond, she had a lot of hard graft to get through.
First spotted as a model in Limerick in 1965 at the age of just 15, throughout the years Celia has always remained a passionate advocate for and representative of the Treaty County. She makes no bones in saying that Carey’s Road was a working class area and that at the time when she started out there weren’t many models from that background.
“I came from the salt of the earth, a working class background,” she says frankly.
“I did Irish dancing with the Dalton School of Irish Dancing, and if anything stood to me when I went into the modelling, that did. Posture and movement, I was never afraid of crowds. I danced from the age of about six until I was 14, would you believe.”
While getting her hair and makeup done in the drawing room of Pery’s Square, Celia tells many stories. She is expressive when doing so, using her hands to demonstrate points, striking a pose when required and also getting up to point things out around the room. The girls dolling her up take no notice, they are enthralled by her, as is Irish Country Living.
Look one: Celia Holman Lee at number one Pery Square, Limerick. \ David Ruffles
While still at school, Celia went to work in Bolgers Stores, previously a department store in Limerick.
“People might look at it and say: ‘Jesus, Bolgers Stores.’ but I tell you one thing, I thank God every day for the background I’ve had because of the experience and the training I got in everything I went into.
“I went in there as an assistant to the lady who was selling the clothes. You weren’t allowed sell for about six months, you weren’t allowed approach a customer, you had to be trained to approach a customer. We also had to learn how to cut brown paper and twine so you could present clothes to the customer.”
From there she was headhunted to work in a number of high-profile department stores and boutiques, including Trudy’s, formerly a boutique in Limerick. When they opened a new store in Galway, Celia was sent up to manage it, a move which landed her on the front of all the Irish daily newspapers and some of the English ones. The photograph was captioned: “Pioneer in hot pants in the west.”
“At the opening of the shop the photographer said: ‘Would you mind doing a picture with me?’ It was the ’60s, so I put on the hot pants and went down the beach, out the hand goes,” says Celia imitating the pose. “Next thing, someone said to me: ‘You’re on the English papers.’ I went all over Ireland and England.”
Look one: Celia Holman Lee at number one Pery Square, Limerick. \ David Ruffles
Model material
Alongside modelling and retail, in her 20s, Celia set up the Holman Lee Agency. Now 42 years in business, it is the longest-running modelling agency in the country. She also has regular fashion slots on Ireland AM and The Today Show, as well as being an ambassador for Oxendales.
When Celia meets Irish Country Living, her daughter Cecile and daughter in-law Asta, who run the agency alongside her, are taking models to a fashion show in Dublin. Storm Diana is howling at the windows and Celia regularly frets aloud about all of them travelling safely.
As a young woman setting up a business, Celia says she just dug in and didn’t even consider obstacles. “I modelled, I did backstage, I organised the shops, I organised the hotels and I fought with everyone, the music fellas and everyone else to get it right,” she laughs. “I used to come up with ideas for changing ramps around, I just did everything. I was under ramps if they were wrong.”
With so much experience in modelling, we want to know how do you spot a model? The answer not being exactly what we expect. “You don’t have to have a great face; you can be curvy, you can have bad skin and you can have bad hair. That’s not a problem at all, it doesn’t really matter. What you have to have is the bloody height. You have to be tall - says she and she five foot eight,” quips Celia with a smile. “It starts around five foot eight.”
All you have to do is look at Celia to see she is effortlessly glamorous and impeccably groomed. In the hotel, while the makeup artist is leaning in to blend her eyeshadow, without thinking, Celia fixes the lady’s collar.
Look two: Celia Holman Lee at number one Pery Square, Limerick. \ David Ruffles
Look three: Celia Holman Lee at number one Pery Square, Limerick. \ David Ruffles
Producing three show-stopping Christmas party looks for these pages, we wonder, with a career engulfed in fashion, does Celia still enjoy planning her own outfits?
“I don’t have to plan that much, because I know exactly what I’m going to do. That is 50 years in the business and I would expect to be like that. You learn. I’m well able to visualise trends. I’m able to see what’s cool, but I would expect to be like that. It’s like a chef cooking for 50 years, you would expect him to be able to cook the table.”
Two weeks ago Celia turned 68. She has never had botox and aside from Crème de le Mer moisturiser, she credits her graceful aging to a lifetime in the fashion industry.
“I think the industry that I have given my life to is full of young people. I’m listening to them, I’m surrounded by them, I’m watching them. You see the makeup girls, the two beautiful young ones there today.
“Those girls, we would sit down and have a coffee. I’m probably older than their grandmother but they don’t see it and I don’t see it. So it doesn’t matter. I think it’s very important to have all age groups and don’t feel that you have to be lecturing to younger people. We can still learn a lot from them.”
And, young people have been a huge focus of Celia’s life of late. The model is absolutely mad about her five grandchildren, proudly showing pictures of them on her phone. With all the running and racing she does, spending time with her grandchildren is her favourite way to relax.
“My greatest joy is the grandchildren. The greatest, greatest joy. When they are around, I kind of come down. It’s like going into another world. They are incredible and they have changed my life completely.”
Celia will always be synonymous with style. There is scarcely a time when she wasn’t involved in the fashion industry, but could she ever imagine herself having done something else?
Absolutely not!
“Nothing. I don’t know whatever else I would have done.”
Read more
Celia Holman Lee celebrates 40 years in fashion at Limerick's Hunt Museum
Sinead’s Curvy Style
Celia Holman Lee is a born and bred city girl, Limerick City to be exact. Sitting upstairs in No. 1 Pery Square Hotel, she points across the People’s Park to where she grew up on Carey’s Road.
Despite being a bona fide “townie”, the fashionista has a great affinity with the farming community, mostly through her work at the Ploughing Championships.
Every year the Holman Lee Agency hosts three fashion shows each day of the Ploughing. With 600 attendees at each, the agency sees its biggest crowds of the year there.
A true style icon, Celia brought her own fashion flair to farming. She is often credited with being the person who made colourful wellies cool in Ireland, the first to sport them through the Ploughing fields years ago.
“I got them in a hardware shop in Adare, I think it was,” muses Celia. “I will always remember it, they were pink with daisies on them. They were children’s shoes. I’m only a size six and they went up to a five and a half, so I bate my legs into them.”
“The reaction I got walking around was huge. For a few years then they started introducing stalls selling coloured wellies with bows and ribbons. Now of course it’s very cool, it’s all Hunters, real fancy ones. In our time it was all bows. I actually had two big pink bows on the side of mine one year.”
Look one: Celia Holman Lee at number one Pery Square, Limerick. \ David Ruffles
Look one: Celia Holman Lee at number one Pery Square, Limerick. \ David Ruffles
Breaking through
But, before Celia could become a trendsetter in the world of agriculture and beyond, she had a lot of hard graft to get through.
First spotted as a model in Limerick in 1965 at the age of just 15, throughout the years Celia has always remained a passionate advocate for and representative of the Treaty County. She makes no bones in saying that Carey’s Road was a working class area and that at the time when she started out there weren’t many models from that background.
“I came from the salt of the earth, a working class background,” she says frankly.
“I did Irish dancing with the Dalton School of Irish Dancing, and if anything stood to me when I went into the modelling, that did. Posture and movement, I was never afraid of crowds. I danced from the age of about six until I was 14, would you believe.”
While getting her hair and makeup done in the drawing room of Pery’s Square, Celia tells many stories. She is expressive when doing so, using her hands to demonstrate points, striking a pose when required and also getting up to point things out around the room. The girls dolling her up take no notice, they are enthralled by her, as is Irish Country Living.
Look one: Celia Holman Lee at number one Pery Square, Limerick. \ David Ruffles
While still at school, Celia went to work in Bolgers Stores, previously a department store in Limerick.
“People might look at it and say: ‘Jesus, Bolgers Stores.’ but I tell you one thing, I thank God every day for the background I’ve had because of the experience and the training I got in everything I went into.
“I went in there as an assistant to the lady who was selling the clothes. You weren’t allowed sell for about six months, you weren’t allowed approach a customer, you had to be trained to approach a customer. We also had to learn how to cut brown paper and twine so you could present clothes to the customer.”
From there she was headhunted to work in a number of high-profile department stores and boutiques, including Trudy’s, formerly a boutique in Limerick. When they opened a new store in Galway, Celia was sent up to manage it, a move which landed her on the front of all the Irish daily newspapers and some of the English ones. The photograph was captioned: “Pioneer in hot pants in the west.”
“At the opening of the shop the photographer said: ‘Would you mind doing a picture with me?’ It was the ’60s, so I put on the hot pants and went down the beach, out the hand goes,” says Celia imitating the pose. “Next thing, someone said to me: ‘You’re on the English papers.’ I went all over Ireland and England.”
Look one: Celia Holman Lee at number one Pery Square, Limerick. \ David Ruffles
Model material
Alongside modelling and retail, in her 20s, Celia set up the Holman Lee Agency. Now 42 years in business, it is the longest-running modelling agency in the country. She also has regular fashion slots on Ireland AM and The Today Show, as well as being an ambassador for Oxendales.
When Celia meets Irish Country Living, her daughter Cecile and daughter in-law Asta, who run the agency alongside her, are taking models to a fashion show in Dublin. Storm Diana is howling at the windows and Celia regularly frets aloud about all of them travelling safely.
As a young woman setting up a business, Celia says she just dug in and didn’t even consider obstacles. “I modelled, I did backstage, I organised the shops, I organised the hotels and I fought with everyone, the music fellas and everyone else to get it right,” she laughs. “I used to come up with ideas for changing ramps around, I just did everything. I was under ramps if they were wrong.”
With so much experience in modelling, we want to know how do you spot a model? The answer not being exactly what we expect. “You don’t have to have a great face; you can be curvy, you can have bad skin and you can have bad hair. That’s not a problem at all, it doesn’t really matter. What you have to have is the bloody height. You have to be tall - says she and she five foot eight,” quips Celia with a smile. “It starts around five foot eight.”
All you have to do is look at Celia to see she is effortlessly glamorous and impeccably groomed. In the hotel, while the makeup artist is leaning in to blend her eyeshadow, without thinking, Celia fixes the lady’s collar.
Look two: Celia Holman Lee at number one Pery Square, Limerick. \ David Ruffles
Look three: Celia Holman Lee at number one Pery Square, Limerick. \ David Ruffles
Producing three show-stopping Christmas party looks for these pages, we wonder, with a career engulfed in fashion, does Celia still enjoy planning her own outfits?
“I don’t have to plan that much, because I know exactly what I’m going to do. That is 50 years in the business and I would expect to be like that. You learn. I’m well able to visualise trends. I’m able to see what’s cool, but I would expect to be like that. It’s like a chef cooking for 50 years, you would expect him to be able to cook the table.”
Two weeks ago Celia turned 68. She has never had botox and aside from Crème de le Mer moisturiser, she credits her graceful aging to a lifetime in the fashion industry.
“I think the industry that I have given my life to is full of young people. I’m listening to them, I’m surrounded by them, I’m watching them. You see the makeup girls, the two beautiful young ones there today.
“Those girls, we would sit down and have a coffee. I’m probably older than their grandmother but they don’t see it and I don’t see it. So it doesn’t matter. I think it’s very important to have all age groups and don’t feel that you have to be lecturing to younger people. We can still learn a lot from them.”
And, young people have been a huge focus of Celia’s life of late. The model is absolutely mad about her five grandchildren, proudly showing pictures of them on her phone. With all the running and racing she does, spending time with her grandchildren is her favourite way to relax.
“My greatest joy is the grandchildren. The greatest, greatest joy. When they are around, I kind of come down. It’s like going into another world. They are incredible and they have changed my life completely.”
Celia will always be synonymous with style. There is scarcely a time when she wasn’t involved in the fashion industry, but could she ever imagine herself having done something else?
Absolutely not!
“Nothing. I don’t know whatever else I would have done.”
Read more
Celia Holman Lee celebrates 40 years in fashion at Limerick's Hunt Museum
Sinead’s Curvy Style
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