SVP Cookstown hold inaugural fashion show

COOKSTOWN St Vincent de Paul Society’s first-ever fashon show was hailed a tremendous success as a grand total of £5,000 was raised towards helping the most needy and vulnerable in our local area.

The Greenvale Hotel was the venue for the event on April 12, and several hundred people enjoyed a very entertaining night of high fashion and lots, lots more.

Kate Moss, Naiomi Campbell and Elle Macpherson must have been shaking in their Christian Louboutin shoes as the supermodels of Cookstown and surrounding districts strutted their stuff on the catwalk.

With an inimitable introduction and commentary by well-known local comic Carol Doey, the ladies – and men – paraded a classy and colourful collection of top labels and cutting-edge couture which had the audience gasping in admiration.

But this was a fashion show with a difference, and the emphasis was on fun as the models – egged on by their families and friends – played to the gallery. In the finest traditions of this most glamorous industry, there was even the odd little strop and hissy-fit (these catwalk queens can be temperamental!) but when it mattered everything ran like clockwork under the smooth guidance of the ladies from St Vincent de Paul.

The magnificent sum raised by this function, boosted in no small part by the donations from local traders, the great assistance of Greenvale Hotel proprietor Mr Michael McElhatton and the generosity of the audience through door and ballot-ticket sales, will go a long way to easing the burden faced by St Vincent de Paul in their efforts to help people in need from all sections of the local community regardless of race, class or creed.