my Tailor

I grew up in Dublin in the sixties and while London was only a 90 minute flight away it might as well have been on Mars. The epicentre of sixties culture was Carnaby Street. It was the place where you just might have bumped into John Lennon buying a satin military uniform to wear for the photoshoot for the album sleeve of Sergeant Pepper. It was where willowy models paraded up and down in mini skirts and bought shiny Mary Quant PVC coats in neon colours.

Simply, it was where young Dubliners yearned to be rather than suffocating in a putrid miasma of parochialism and sitting through Sunday sermons denouncing ‘permissiveness’. We now know, of course, that the fiery condemnation of lax morals from the pulpit was all too often followed by the premeditated sexual assault of some unfortunate altar boy in the sacristy after the congregation had returned home to meditate on the important message of abstinence in all matters sexual.

The stock image on the right above aroused my curiosity about where priests go to purchase their vestments. It turns out they do the same as the rest of us and shop online. 

Back to the 60's

The sixties definitely stopped swinging by the tine they reached Ireland. Instead of the Rolling Stones, we had the comically named Dicky Rock and his showband. Mr. Rock had obviously chosen his stage name with some mischievousness as it slyly thumbed its priapic nose at the stultifying primness of Irish society. Nobody, however, was fooled by Dicky. He had the James Dean sneer but lacked the drooping cigarette because he he never smoked which sort of gave the game away. You just knew he went to mass on a Sunday like the rest of us. Anyway, everyone knew James Dean would never be seen dead in a clown sized bow tie.

Instead of Biba we had Clerys department store, a dreary temple to boxed sets of Irish linen table napkins and yellowed chipped mannequins draped in loose fitting nylon blouses and shapeless crimplene skirts that no priest could ever have taken exception to. Clery's has the distinction of being one of the first purpose built department stores in Europe, established in 1853 and predating the famous Le Bon Marche in Paris. It also laid claim, rather improbably, to having the first animatronic 'zoo' in a store which I discovered in an old video from the 1930's. 

Although nobody admitted openly that Dublin was divided down the middle by class, the city was more class conscious than a reunion of minor Bavarian nobility. Few people from the South Side ever ventured into Clerys. Instead, they shopped in Brown Thomas on Grafton Street. There, you could buy boxed Van Heusen shirts compete with a matching tie and sometimes even a tie pin. 

My parents hedged their bets and shopped somewhere on the continuum between Clerys and Brown Thomas for my school jackets. My father believed that the only material proper for a school jacket was Donegal tweed. If you were looking for such a jacket then the place to go was the emporium of the wonderfully named Messrs Kevin and Howlin in Nassau Street. In those far off days the idea of wearing a tweed jacket was a truly terrifying prospect for any schoolboy.  Turning up at school in a ballet tutu would probably have caused less mirth. Kids were expected to be stoic in those days as we didn't have woke rules on not ridiculing your class mates. You just had to put up with the howls of derision for your parent’s misguided choices in Nassau Street.

I can remember my father taking me, in my early teens, to a gentleman’s outfitters to buy some light summer vests. Yes, boys wore vests in those days. When my father announced what we were looking for, the counter assistant opened some glass fronted wooden drawers behind him, fixed me with a polite gaze and enquired, ‘Is Sir visiting the tropics?’  These random memories of Dublin came back to me today after I paid a visit to my tailor. I have always wanted to use the possessive adjective with that particular noun and it’s taken a lifetime to get to this moment. The reason for my visit is directly related to our upcoming trip to Europe.

The first stop on our grand tour is Italy and I need hardly point out this country long ago kidnapped the French concept of ‘chic’ and turned it into something far superior, much to the chagrin of the French. Italians have developed the concept of looking good by adding their subtle twist that is embodied in the glorious Italian word ‘sprezzatura’. The term was minted by Baldassare Castiglione in his Book of the Courtier. It means:

“to practise in everything a certain nonchalance (sprezzatura) that shall conceal design and show what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought…"

Perhaps the best example of this Italian studied carelessness was displayed by the billionaire industrialist Gianni Agnelli who would wear his wrist watch over his shirt cuffs or combine a bespoke suit with unlaced desert boots. Only rare people can carry this off with unselfconscious panache and it certainly helps if you have Italian genes. Other nationalities should only try this style of sprezzatura with extreme caution and under expert supervision.

When I began thinking about what to pack for our trip I realized that it would be necessary to have appropriate attire for the passegiata. After all, we wouldn’t want to look like antipodean hill farmers who had no idea how to comport ourselves. The only remotely suitable garment I possessed was a decades old linen jacket that had never properly fitted me.  I decided that I should get it tailored so that it did not attract unfavourable attention or worse, mockery.

To my delight, I discovered that Nelson has, rather improbably, a fine tailoring establishment. It is housed in a fine old two-story wooden building and the fitting room is exactly as you would expect – bolts of cloth lying on chairs and shelves piled with books of fabric swatches from Dormeuil.  The establishment rejoices in the name 'Pyne and Eid'. Dickens couldn't have done better. My tailor turns out to be called Sam and not at all what I was expecting. He is from Egypt via Sydney and casually mentions he used to do alterations for Burberry and Gucci. Having subtly assured me that I am in safe hands, he swiftly pinned and tucked my jacket, offered me some new buttons and sent me on my way. 

I have purchased a small selection of silk pocket squares to carelessly arrange in my breast pocket but have not yet decided whether I will wear my watch over my shirt cuffs. Perhaps best to wait and see what everyone else is doing before being too ambitious in the sprezzatura department.