The Friends of Joyce Tower Society’s ‘Best dressed Volunteer Competition’ has now become an annual event with the wonderful people who staff the tower going that extra mile during the Bloomsday Festival and dressing up in their best Joycean finery for the week’s festivities and events.
Each year, visitors are delighted to see our staff dressed up to the nines just to make their visitor experience even more special and, each year, a panel of judges chooses the best of the best dressed volunteers!
Well, this year, the judges found their task especially difficult. They reported a very high standard of entries and they were really encouraged by the number of volunteers who embraced the Joycean spirit and the fashions of the early 20th century.
Well done to all who submitted their ‘selfies’. Hopefully, the volunteers enjoyed wearing their outfits as much as we enjoyed seeing them. They certainly made the Joyce Tower a very colourful venue for our visitors.
The panel of esteemed judges (Rob Goodbody, Helen Colgan and Grainne O’Malley) spent a lot of time (and quite a few glasses of wine) looking through all the entries and there were several very strong candidates. Committee members were not, of course, eligible though some of their outfits were, indeed, prizeworthy. In the end, the judges applied a criteria “Most striking outfit and accessories with Joycean period flavour” to come to unanimous decisions for each category – it was the level of detail and accessories that decided things in the final analysis.
And so here they are, the 2017 Best Dressed Volunteer Awards:
1st prize (female): Cathy Clarke, 2nd prize (female): Annamaria Crowe Serrano
1st prize (male): Frank Cogan, 2nd prize (male): John O’Reilly
Best Dressed Male
Best Dressed Female
A special ‘Most Outrageous Outfit’ award was created and presented to Aidan Coleman for his wonderfully subtle interpretation of Molly Bloom.
