Aly Dunne

February 16, 20241 yr

Dorothee Bis F/W 1989

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February 19, 20241 yr

Aly's comp card:

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March 2, 20241 yr

Ferre again Reposting in higher quality.

Gianfranco Ferre F/W 1991

Photographer: Gian Paolo Barbieri

fondazionegianpaolobarbieri

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March 2, 20241 yr

Gianfranco Ferre F/W 1992 Catalogue

Photographer: Gian Paolo Barbieri

fondazionegianpaolobarbieri

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March 15, 20241 yr

Vogue Germany December 1989

"Pomp Amour"

Photographer: Walter Chin

With Fabienne Terwinghe

Paper Jungle, magazines-models-fashion @ ebay

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March 16, 20241 yr

On 2/17/2024 at 12:27 AM, danny-19 said:

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac F/W 1989:

Sorry about the wrong caption, this is actually Dorothee Bis F/W 1989 Dorothée Bis

One more:

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April 26, 20241 yr

J. MENDEL advertisement - L´OFFICIEL France November 1988 #743

Thanks for the ID to parisienne. :flower:

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June 9, 2024Jun 9

Mademoiselle January 1986

"Your Beauty Horoscope"

Photographer: Michel Comte

Hair: Edward Tricomi

Makeup: Linda Mason

Manicure: Larisa Raizberg

Internet Archive

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June 22, 2024Jun 22

Thank you so much for the adds, missparker & Vogue Girl

There is a nice informative article about Aly on Irish Independent:

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‘In my modelling days, predators were everywhere’ – Irish supermodel Aly Dunne on leaving the industry to become a spiritual teacher

After modelling for fashion houses such as Chanel and Valentino throughout the 1980s and 90s, Dublin-born supermodel Aly Dunne decided to follow a very different path. Now living in Southern California, she’s a spiritual teacher, with clients all over the world.

“I remember being 11 years of age and sitting in the classroom in Rathdown School in south Dublin and the teacher asking us, ‘What are you going to be when you are older?’.

My classmates wanted to be nurses, doctors, teachers, and mothers… but when the question came to me, I said, ‘I want to be a top fashion model’ and everyone burst out laughing, including the teacher. It was shocking to everyone that I would even think that.

You see, I was so skinny and I was so tall for my age — at the time, at 11 years old, I was 5ft 9in or 5ft 10in. And I didn’t think I was pretty at all, nor did anyone else, seemingly. It was interesting to me though, because everyone was laughing and it just didn’t bother me at all. It was like a surprising realisation… ‘Oh!… they don’t know. I know, but they don’t…’.

A couple of years later, when I was 13 – and 5ft 11in at this point – my older sister Sally and I were having our Saturday morning breakfast in Bewley’s on Grafton Street. This guy came over to the table and it turned out he was a friend of her then-boyfriend, now husband. His name was Tony Higgins, who I discovered was a premier fashion photographer in Dublin. Later that week, the guy called to arrange my first shoot with him.

I borrowed my sister’s clothes for the shoot the following week. I thought it was a fabulous look – my sister’s purple jumpsuit and white cowboy boots. I thought I was so grown-up looking, but looking back at those pictures, I was just a 13-year-old child!

Afterwards, Tony said I had potential and things kind of mushroomed from there. I ended up in Morgan The Agency, which was at the time run by Nan Morgan and her daughter, Rebecca. They were just the best agents – so supportive. I had finished senior school at this point and I needed them at a crucial time in my life as I wanted to embark on my international career. They believed in me from the start and still, to this day, they are my favourite agents – I still talk with Rebecca from time to time.

I started my international modelling career in Hamburg in the late summer of 1984 but I did very little work there. The German catalogues preferred a look that was more blonde and blue-eyed, and with my dark hair and more exotic looks, it didn’t work. That fall, a Milanese agent came up to Hamburg and interviewed me. She invited me to model with them in Milan but I didn’t have the money to go. I came back to Dublin, on my return ticket, for Christmas a couple of weeks later and went to see Nan and Rebecca. They kindly gave me a loan to get to Milan, enough for the plane and a few incidentals. I was so excited.

Milan is where it all took off for me. I arrived in the now-famous freak snowstorm in January 1985. There were three or four feet of snow, so the next day I had to walk many miles through the snow sludge to my two go-sees, one for Vogue on one side of town and one for Donna magazine on the other side of town… In the beginning, I had no Italian, so I didn’t even know how to order food. My mom had packed me some cheese sandwiches and that’s what I ate for the first two days.

I stayed in a little pensione. My agent had chosen it because it was close to the agency. It was mad because it was full of models, make-up artists, and hairdressers – basically anyone in the fashion industry who had just landed in Milan. There were maybe eight rooms on our floor and we all had to share the one bathroom! It was all very collegiate once I got to know everyone. But still, I knew after a few days that I wanted to get my own place because it was just too loud, with very little privacy.

That first day I was booked. I worked that evening for Donna and I never stopped working after that. I often worked seven days a week and sometimes two jobs a day. I think the reason why I was successful in modelling was that people could see that I approached it as an art form. I was so happy that I was working as I was able to pay back Morgan The Agency within a few short months.

After a year or so of many shoots and lots of practice, I felt I was mastering my work in front of the camera. I wanted to bring drama, elegance, and beauty to the photographs to inspire people. And I think that was the knowledge I had as a young child. I knew I had this artistry in me. It wasn’t particularly about how I looked, but that I knew I could be this mercurial creature in front of the camera.

I loved when a photographer trusted me so we could create fabulous images together. The crew and clients would sometimes stand around while I was being photographed and give me standing ovations when I finished – it was so healing to be acknowledged for what I was bringing to the team effort.I initially did a lot of work with Harper’s Bazaar but then Vogue found me and I started my Italian Vogue period, some months I would have 20 pages in the magazine shot with different photographers. I worked with many designers in Italy, London and Paris. I really loved working with Valentino (Garavani). I did many of his campaigns and shows for years and I had tremendous respect for his work.

Aly Dunne in her heyday modelling for Valentino

I also loved working with Karl Lagerfeld. I worked with him in Paris on his Chanel collections and on his own eponymous line. He treated me very much like an equal and a collaborator. I loved that and I loved his clothes – especially Chanel. Other designers that stand out are Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, Isaac Mizrahi, and greats like Gaultier, Moschino, Mugler, Yves St. Laurent, Gianfranco Ferré, Armani and John Galliano. I also got to work with the best photographers: David Bailey, Gian Paolo Barbieri, Javier Vallhonrat, Horst P. Horst, Steven Meisel, Arthur Elgort, Hiro, Mario Testino, Helmut Newton, Paolo Roversi, Nick Knight… the list goes on.

But yes, there were also industry predators. They were everywhere in Milan and Paris. I had already seen my fair share of predators in Dublin so I was wise to all that when I arrived in Italy. I focused on the work and I never went out in the evening to the agency parties or what have you. As for so many of the other models I knew… I could tell you horror stories.

From the middle of 1985 to 1987, I was everywhere. I had places in Milan, Paris, London, and New York. There’s a reason why you need to be young to model, and that’s because it’s exhausting! You do a job in New York, then you get the red-eye to Paris, arrive at 5am and go straight to work again. It’s very gruelling and not only do you have to look good, but also be in a good mood, inspired and sweet and fabulous and creative…

In 1986, I went to New York where I did the NYC fashion shows with models like Iman, Yasmin Le Bon, Gail Elliott, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington. I loved New York. It was exciting and I felt free.

I decided then that I wanted to stay in New York. I was just tired of all the travel, plus in New York, you got paid, something that Paris and Italian agencies liked to, how shall I say, play with? In the States, everything was scheduled from 9-5, the agency only took 20pc compared to the 50pc or more in Italy, so you made more money and I could have a life. I could finally make plans to go see a movie with friends. Around the time I moved to New York at 18 or 19, I started to have a spiritual awakening. I saw that the fashion industry was all fabulous and a great way to provide for myself, but I was starting to have a feeling that there was much more for me. I had begun my interest in meditation at 13, but by this time my commitment to meditation and connecting with ‘That’ went much deeper and I was practising for hours a day.

It got to a point where I felt my spirit so much inside, and yet I noticed in the fashion world everyone was only interested in my looks and not my heart or my mind. It was time to shift things.

Did I feel the pressure to remain a certain weight? Very much so. I think another reason why I left was that I just got too hungry! Even the models who look like they’re naturally thin are working so hard to stay that way. And I wasn’t up for starving myself anymore.

So I decided to move to LA to become an actress in 1990-1991. I still worked some exclusive modelling jobs in New York and Europe but with acting, I thought at least I’d be expressing myself more fully and… wow, that industry was something else.

I did some movies and TV and hundreds of TV commercials. Then I thought, ‘OK, maybe I’ll express myself through my music’. I became a singer-songwriter for 10 years. I wrote music for television and film, made a couple of albums. Songwriting was one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done.

My devotion to meditation continued. I studied in India and all over the world for many years. In my forties, I lived as a monk for four or five years. This path I’ve been on – 43 years of meditation – has been the greatest joy of my life. After my ‘living as a monk’ era, I decided to come out of seclusion and tackle the real estate world and be around people again. After I passed my RE exam, Coldwell Banker invited me to work with them.

I became Rookie of the Year in my first eight months of practising real estate in Malibu, California, which was unheard of. Within three years I was in the top 1pc of agents in Coldwell Banker worldwide. A few years ago, I started my own brokerage.

In the spring of 2018, I had a premonition of the fires in Malibu. It was a terrifying premonition I was shown – in my vision, everything was burning with roaring red flames and there were people screaming … the black smoke... the tremendous heat… I couldn’t breathe. A woman was screaming, ‘This is Armageddon!’ Her face was showing sheer terror. It was a heart-wrenching vision.

My guides told me to leave by August and go to Crete. I left for Crete, Greece in August. My husband joined me soon after and we watched with great sadness as Malibu had the worst fire ever that November. The Woolsey fire killed three people, burned nearly 100,000 acres, and destroyed over 1,600 homes. It devastated Malibu. I spoke with a friend, who lived in Malibu at the time, about the fire some months later. I was struck when she said, ‘Aly, it was so awful, it was Armageddon!’

Now, as a spiritual teacher and Intuitive, I have clients all over the world and I love it because I actually get to help people. I work with a group of divine guides and I channel their personal messages to my clients.

I have many people from all walks of life, powerful business CEOs and the like, who trust me to help guide how to approach different matters in their businesses, to people wanting to deepen their connection with themselves and solve their life problems. I also teach meditation and Sanskrit Mantra. It’s so powerful to see the transformations in people’s lives after we have worked together. It gives my life such meaning.

The other great models I worked with back in the day were so talented, smart, and beautiful – I love them and have great respect for them. But I took a very different path. A lot of them are still very successful today, many still model. Some of them, unfortunately, have already died for different reasons. Some were sick, some had addiction issues… which is heartbreaking.

I just feel so blessed that I chose the path I did because it worked for me. I am so grateful for everything, the good and the bad that I have experienced. I’ve learned so much and continue to do so every day. The main thing I want in life today is to be useful and to fulfil my potential, and actually make somebody else’s life a little easier. And that’s what I’m doing.”

Aly’s website is sacredair.com
As told to Katie Byrne
Irish Independent Tue 31 May 2022