Latest news with #Dilys
Irish Independent
20-05-2025
- Health
- Irish Independent
Volunteers needed in Laois for horse riding lessons for people with disabilities
Riding for the Disabled Ireland (RDA Ireland) has been in operation for decades and is now looking towards finding more people who are comfortable around horses and available to support lessons during the day on weekdays. The charity recently teamed up with GAIN Equine Nutrition, which is owned by Ireland's leading dairy and grains co-operative Tirlán. Funding from this partnership will help the charity train and support volunteers. The call has come following a gathering of almost 400 volunteers in Slane, Meath to celebrate the positive benefits horses have on the lives of hundreds of adults and children with special and additional needs at dedicated riding centres around Ireland. At the gathering, RDA Ireland recognised three volunteers who have given their time to the organisation for 40 years. Other volunteers were recognised for 30, 20 and 10 years of volunteering on a weekly basis with groups across the country. Secretary at RDA Ireland, Dilys Lindsay said the charity is urging companies to allow employees on weekdays to support their services under their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes, or consider sponsoring a rider under the charity's 'Sponsor a Rider Scheme'. Dilys has been a volunteer for 26 years and did not have much experience with horses before joining the charity. 'I volunteered because I knew another volunteer. Volunteers only need to be comfortable around horses. All other training is given,' she said. 'Several have said their first word on a horse. Sometimes it's the horse's name. Other times it's words like 'slow', 'stop' or other commands we use during the lessons. 'Parents, teachers or carers tell us that horse riding boosts their mood, calms them, helps their balance, and helps them to sleep better. I really don't know what it is – perhaps it's the magic of the horse,' she said. Intending volunteers in Laois are urged to contact Laois RDAI Group which operates out of the Stradbally area. Head of Equine at GAIN Equine Nutrition, Joanne Hurley said: 'We're delighted to continue our support for another really valuable part of the equine industry through our partnership with RDA Ireland. It enriches the lives of so many service users, their families, and communities right around the country.' RDA Ireland has 30 groups across the country and almost 400 volunteers providing weekly riding or carriage driving sessions to more than 380 children and adults living with disabilities.
New York Times
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Designer Making Exquisite Clothes From Brillo Pads and Plastic Fruit
The British designer Harry Pontefract's clothing often starts with a very specific obsession. Last year, for example, his fixation with vintage faux fruit led him on a six-month search for plastic grapes, which he incorporated into his latest collection in the form of a sleeveless dress hand-embroidered with cascading bunches of them in shades of black and deep Bordeaux. He describes the aesthetic of the piece as 'cheap opulence.' Several garments — including a slim-fitting, hand-sewn corset dress that pools below the ankles and a cloudlike matching stole — consist of longhaired sheepskins, which he selected from the flocks of two female shepherds in Wales and England's Peak District. One of the animals, he says, was named Dilys. 'It's really about if something moves me or about bringing things into a new light,' says Pontefract, 36. He admits, however, that 'everyone's been sort of calling me crazy.' A native of Sheffield, Pontefract now lives and works in an old shoe factory in East London's Hackney neighborhood. He began collecting unusual materials — 'hoarding,' he says — as a child, and the attic and basement of his parents' home are still crammed with boxes of his accumulated treasures. As a teen, he and his friends would customize their jeans using his mother's sewing machine, a hobby that became a vocation when he enrolled in the fashion design program at London's Central Saint Martins. His 2016 graduate collection featured deconstructed underpinnings — upcycled bras and silk negligees — that slipped suggestively off the body and were styled with layers of skin-colored tights. Post-graduation, during his six-year stint on the design team at the fashion house Loewe in Paris, he continued to experiment with his one-off creations on the side before formally launching Ponte, which is sold exclusively at Dover Street Market, two years ago. In addition to the sheep fleeces — which were blow-dried, teased and sprayed by a hairstylist to create the effect of 'blurred memories, so you can't really see where the dress ends and the background begins, like a Gerhard Richter painting,' Pontefract says — the new collection, his fourth, will include a gown of sorts made from hand-shredded Brillo pads molded into trailing lengths of metallic rope. 'It's important that you can't tell what it is,' he says of that dress, which one would never guess was made from steel wool. 'That's much more interesting: It leaves it up to whoever's looking at it to feel something.' Along with such museum-worthy looks (the Costume Institute at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art just acquired a pair of Ponte tights, which are padded with polyester stuffing from old toys to look like jodhpurs), there are also more wearable styles, including reconstructed denim jeans, a leather suit stitched together from eight different salvaged trench coats and a precisely tailored black suit made from dead-stock wool. A single-breasted, drop-shoulder jacket paired with wide-leg knife-pleat pants, it has a slouchy, modern fit — and, of course, a back story. A large silky patch sewn onto the seat of the trousers is 'made out of an old satin dress that I found somewhere,' Pontefract says. 'There's a slight, sexual nature to it. You won't see it in a photograph, but I know it's there.'
