Setting the table has been elevated to an art form by this Irish woman

Tipperary woman Fiona Leahy designs lavish tablescapes for the likes of Louis Vuitton, Dior, Fendi, Stella McCartney, Gwyneth Paltrow and the Qatari royal family

Tipperary-born Fiona Leahy putting the finishing touches to one of her creations at home.

I HAVE developed a new relationship with my ironing board. Ignored in a year where it matters little if my clothes have had a rub of the iron, the board has made a career change and now attends my online dance classes, reinvented as a ballet barre.

And it seems I’m not the only one finding multi-purpose with this household staple.

Fiona Leahy, tablescaper to an A-list clientele admits to using hers as a low Japanese-style table for her and her partner in their London home, when she’s not designing lavish tablescapes for the likes of Louis Vuitton, Dior, Fendi, Stella McCartney, Harrods, Erin Lauder, Gwyneth Paltrow and the Qatari royal family.

A tablescape Fiona designed for Italian fashion house Aquazzura.

Although it’s a long way from Tipperary where she grew up, it might have been where she learned to appreciate a well-laid table.

“My grandmother had a hotel and my mother has a B&B so I grew up in hospitality,” she tells me, although that career was not for her.

“I decided to go to fashion college but I was the classic dropout,” she explains, something which prompted a move to New York where, at the age of 21, she was working as a fashion stylist.

“Five years later I moved to London and worked with Jade Jagger designing her in-store parties,” she adds, and where she hired burlesque performer Dita Von Teese for one of these parties. Later, when she set up her own company, Fiona Leahy Design, she designed Von Teese’s wedding to Marilyn Manson, coincidentally, in a castle in Tipperary.

Then things took a serious international turn.

Fiona was invited to design a tablescape for the London launch of Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop brand.

“I was asked to do a wedding for 1,000 guests in Qatar,” Fiona says. “I had just watched Sofia Coppola’s film about Marie Antoinette so I made that the theme.”

Complete with fans by the same people who made them for Marie Antoinette, and the inevitable nerves and anticipation that everything would go to plan for her fledgling company, she says, “It was one of my first live events and one of my first business class tickets,” adding with a little self-deprecation, “I’m still faking it.”

Fifteen years later, big weddings and parties are her forte. She says, “Tablescape is my passion. I’m putting my love of fashion into the tabletop.”

It’s clearly visible in the opulence and lavishness of her work, and I’m wondering how much free rein she’s given.

“It depends on the client,” she replies. “If it’s a brand, you have brand guidelines you have to work within. If I got free rein, it’s a case of, well, what do I do here? So, I ask what’s needed, what are we trying to convey?

“If there’s not a good synergy between us I’ll turn it down,” she says. “And I’m a vegetarian and I’m trying to move away from animal products, so I turned down an event where they were serving foie gras.”

An elegant outdoor summer tablescape Fiona designed for fashion brand Love Shack includes a parasol at each setting for a decorative and practical touch.

While lockdown may have put the kibosh on lavish weddings, parties, and foreign travel which inspires much of her work, she’s no less busy.

“I’ve just been appointed creative director of Aquazurra Casa to design a range of homewares,” she says, and like the rest of us, domestic life has taken on a new attraction.

“I’m very busy with renovations at home and it’s a time to reorganise the studio,” she says. “We live in the age of distraction so it’s the silver lining to have this time.”

She also says she finds making her own tablescapes therapeutic, so with Easter just two weeks away, I ask for her top three tips for tablescaping with a seasonal theme, and in Fiona Leahy style she goes approaches it lavishly and gives me 10.

Fiona Leahy’s Tablescaping Pointers

• Embrace spring flowers with planters of snowdrops or bulbs rather than cut flowers
• Marble eggs or paint them
• Use beautiful ribbon to tie napkins
• Have a yellow and white theme. Yellow is the colour of the year
• Use your best things and go bright and cheerful
• Handwrite a menu with your name on top
• Use placemats and layer your tablescape
• Do it in advance and give yourself time to move things around and have fun
• If nothing else, use tapered candles
• Tie cutlery with string or ribbon, especially if you don’t have lovely cutlery
• You don’t have to use a dining table. A card table at the sofa or coffee table works