Museums want Sonia’s dress

Press, 16 October 1976, Page 10

Museums want Sonia’s dress

That famous slit-sided dress that Mrs Sonia McMahon wore to the White House in Washington in 1971, when her husband, Mr William McMahon, was Prime Minister of Australia, is being sought by two Australian fashion museums, writes Janet Parr from Sydney. But Mrs McMahon is still not sure that she wants to give it away. She says she may want to wear it again. After 11 years of marriage she still wears her wedding dress to special receptions. If the museums are looking for pieces from Australian politicians’ wives, and other interesting women, what could be the contribution of the new Mrs Neville Wran. who was Miss Jill Hickson before she recently married the Premier of New South Wales? Would it be the woolly socks and jeans she wears when she rides her bike in

Centennial Park on Sundays? Or might it be one of the elegant outfits she wears as a senior executive with Australia’s overseas airline Qantas? Mr Wran, who has been divorced from his first wife since he took office, and Miss Hickson married quietly and with no prior publicity at Mr Wran’s white terrace house in Woollahra. The dozen friends who were there included a Federal Senator and the Premier of South Australia. The civil ceremony had music with it, one friend playing the harp and another the ’cello.

The wedding was at 12.30 p.m. one Friday, and on Monday morning both bride and groom were back at work after a week-end spent relaxing. The new Mrs Wran is aged 28, 20 years younger than her husband. She is blonde, slim and elegant, and a B.A. of Sydney University. She intends to keep on with her career which means she will “have to skip the afternoon teas and the interviews about

what she cooks for dinner.” “You just have to be brave about public life,” she said. “And you have to try and keep a little of yourself in reserve. If you give out too much it’s not your own any more. Frankly, I don’t subscribe to the notion that one’s private life must necessarily be public if one’s occupation is public. Everyone has to have a nook that’s safe and comfortable and beyond scrutiny and I would like to provide that for Neville.

“The important thing for me is to be a creditable human being and a real live one.”

She has a range of interests and activities, international affairs, opera, music generally — she plays the piano—has presented record programmes on FM radio in Sydney and says she and her husband are both “chess and Scrabble freaks.” And, also like her husband, she says, she believes in giving no less than her best, of stretching capabilities to the limit.