IMAGE Spring 2026 hits shelves Friday, March 6, and editor Lauren Heskin is here to highlight the best of what’s inside the new issue.
Welcome to the first of four very special issues this year, celebrating 50 years of IMAGE Magazine. Much of this issue was spent delicately paging through the first issues in 1976 and the historian in me was in her element. Established as an outlet for women’s voices in a changing Ireland, that ethos has continued through the decades.
Half a century is a significant milestone and in looking back to our inaugural year, I was struck by how the 1976 content was reflected in the 2026 iteration. An introductory feature on Montessori-style primary school learning in the September 1976 issue echoes Nathalie Marquez Courtney’s piece, on page 105, on the rise of Steiner Schools. Sarah Gill met with jewellers and shop owners Clare Grennan and Laura Caffrey to talk about their Irish landscape-inspired pieces (page 61), while the inaugural November issue profiled Cynthia Rice, then the only woman to qualify as a “journeyman silversmith” that century. Based in Kilkenny, she joined the field in her mid-thirties following her husband’s passing.
In fashion, the tennis aesthetic took centre court in the July 1976 issue, as Suzie Coen tackles the rise and rise of high fashion sportswear on page 44. Megan Burns rounds up her catwalk trends pages with a dose of denim on page 36, where doubling up your denim was the focus in the May 1976 issue, suggesting you “add to your jeans a matching waistcoat, a chic shirt and a jaunty scarf”. Donegal tweed, which featured in nearly every issue of IMAGE’s first year, continues into the current era as Ruth O’Connor meets the weavers pushing to give the historic fabric European protection, from page 67.
Interviews with prominent women such as businesswoman and philanthropist Norma Smurfit and the “top women in advertising” feature in those early issues, reflected in 2026 with three women working in tech across telecommunications, fashion and gaming (page 85). Elsewhere, Leonie Corcoran writes a personal and poised piece about getting her business off the ground while simultaneously becoming a single parent (page 92), proving just how far we’ve come from questions around married women’s place in the workforce in the mid-1970s.
The focus on beautiful homes and delectable dishes continues too, as Megan Burns takes a peek inside the home of April and the Bear shop owner, Siobhan Lam, from page 142, and Nikki Walsh heads west to see what’s on the menu at Foxford Cafe (page 158). Cliodhna Prendergast gets to grips with East London from page 171, though it is probably slightly pricier now than it was in Mary Kenny’s 1976 advice column on moving to the English capital when she lamented the cost of renting: “If you do find a bedsit in inner London it would be unusual to find one for less than £16 a week.”
There is much to enjoy in those first issues and in this one, so here’s to the next 50.
Find IMAGE Spring 2026 in stores, or click here to buy online.
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