A good dressing down

While a certain sartorial look was once expected among the professional classes in Dublin during his former UCD days, Dr Garrett FitzGerald recalls the quite different ‘uniform’ on taking up his registrar post in Galway.

Those who know about things are in accord concerning the slippery sartorial slope, which seems to be unending. Proof of this is seen in the dearth of references to ‘one’s tailor’ in the newspapers.

Men of substance in the literature of our far-off schooldays were always in debt to their tailors.

One was nobody at all if their suit didn’t come from a firm who could boast appointment to the queen, much like Benson & Hedges cigarettes.

Professional men were expected to announce their importance through the medium of their clothing.

Even my hometown boasted three busy tailors who could assemble a suit-of-clothes for you in six or eight weeks.

One such firm would have the coat ready for fitting within a fortnight, but there could be some irritating delay in the trousering department; this was explained by the tendency of the leg man to take contemplative leave about once a year — an ailment that usually reached its denouement on discharge by the good monks.

I was fitted in stages for such a staggered suit to coincide with my arrival at UCD to be made a doctor out of.

Three-piece was the order of the day amongst the established and aspirant professional classes in our capital city. Stylistic elegance of the hierarchy ascended from initial dowdiness through succeeding medical school years. By the time we hit the hospitals, one could have no fears for the livelihood of Maurice Abrahams and some slightly lesser but equally expensive bespoke clothiers. By observing senior colleagues, it became apparent to one that the road to success in Fitzwilliam Square was festooned with many or all of the essential components, such as a grey/navy pin-stripe suit with waistcoat highlighted by a rugby club/old school/medical school or royal college tie — many of which bore testimony to the specialty and religion, even the denomination, of the wearer.

Shirts were white or blue — the latter a preponderance in my own hospital. Socks frequently came in understated, unstriped silk from Silberry’s of Dame Street, while shoes, which bided their off-days in serried ranks of shoe-treed glory in Leeson Park’s or Killiney’s finest mansions, were mostly sourced from the outer coatings of now-extinct animals.

Overcoats came in three main varieties; the charcoal cashmere, the camel-hair, and the sheepskin — reserved for weekend Rugby matches. The flat cap was nowhere to be seen amongst doctors outside of places like Cork and Longford. An odd surgeon wore a papahka to denote his White Russian leanings and always requested that matron hand him his ‘astrakhan’ when leaving the hospital for lunch at his club on the Green.

Pic: Getty Images

My late mother, God love her, brought me to an off-the-peg draper in Dublin on my 21st birthday. A sheepskin coat — three sizes too big — was purchased and the rest is history. I was on my way!

Dr Leopardstown
At the conclusion of an obstetrics lecture in the college, it was the unusual habit of one teacher to ask questions of the students and on one occasion while I was snuggled into the coat, he directed the query at me and addressed me as ‘Leopardstown’. Surely I had arrived!

It was a good career move to land a registrar job in the professorial firm in Galway. The only question remaining after such trivia as organising a dwelling, schools for the children, a bank loan and a car was what one should wear.

At the time, most people were aware of the Galway shawl and the Aran crois glimpsed on postcards and in Pathé newsreels. Instinct informed one that coming as Dublin doctor/London undertaker might not be the thing.

Fisherman’s clogs
Questions romped through the cortex, evoking bookmaker’s answers. The Galway doctors were unlikely to be wearing fishing-fly decorated green hats with the hair growing up though them. They surely wouldn’t wear fisherman’s clogs. They would not have thick homespun and homemade trousers suspended with the crois, with the fly buttons on the outside. No, they could be wearing thorn-proof tweed suits and Viyella shirts like the vet students in Dublin, and maybe the odd racing hat and thick-rimmed glasses. Brown boots laced with tar-augmented oakum to counteract the Atlantic mist would be the banker. I hocked my fob and watch and stopped polishing the shoes a month before departing.

After all, I wasn’t going to Cork, where I would have expected to concentrate on road-bowling apparel and sailing gear for Crossers. I also conjured up images of flat caps and whippets to include those colleagues with more rural origins. How wrong were the postcards and the newsreels!

The only bit they got right was the absence of pin-stripe suits. You wouldn’t necessarily be able to pick out a colleague in the street. They were delightfully normal. Travel broadened the mind and allowed me to shed the uniform.

In any event, Bri-Nylon had arrived. Drip-dry, you could wash the suit in the sink, squeeze it out, roll it in a towel, and put it back on immediately.

And you could charge your car battery with it.

Who needed a tailor?

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