‘Chaos is our favourite genre’ - Thalia Heffernan and Erica-Cody on work ethic, support systems and making Dublin fun again

As best friends and housemates with an equally strong professional drive, it was never going to be long before model Thalia and singer Erica found the right project to work on together. Now thanks to Paddy McKillen Jr, they have found just that in The Collins Club at The Leinster in Dublin

Thalia Heffernan and Erica-Cody celebrate their new roles at The Collins Club in The Leinster. Photo: Alex Sheridan

Liadán Hynes

By the time property developer Paddy McKillen Jr got in touch to see if they would like to be involved in the new club he was opening in The Leinster hotel — a sort of Soho House without membership — best friends model Thalia Heffernan and singer Erica-Cody Kennedy Smith (best known by her stage name Erica-Cody) had already concluded that they should go into business together.

Seeing the fun they were having together, documented on both women’s Instagram stories — getting ready together for nights out, sea swims and beach walks with their dogs — the pair seemed to be having the time of their lives. That’s increasingly rare to see these days, in a society which offers little for its 20-somethings, so many of whom are being forced to emigrate against their wishes, not to mention a raft of recent nightclub closures. The pair seem like an extraordinary bucking of the trend, simply for having such a good time, for their crusade to “make Dublin fun again,” a phrase they repeatedly bandy about.