The Art of Making
Michael and Elsie Frazer in their bespoke tailoring shop in the village of Hospital, Ireland / Noel Mullins photo
I read a report recently in The Sunday Times that ‘Fast Fashion,’ a term for the impulse buying of clothes online and in stores that people wear just a few times and then discard, contributes 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year into the atmosphere. In the USA alone, 13 million tons of clothing are thrown into landfills or burned. In the UK, 300,000 tons of clothing end up in landfills, an interesting statistic in that the public is often led to believe, incorrectly, that farmers are to blame for all the unwanted emissions.
Those in the hunting fields, however, used to see family after family who wore hunting attire passed down from prior generations. What was their secret?
Of course, articles of attire or tack occasionally do have to be replaced due to the rigors of the countryside. When that occurs, the choices are generally buying off the shelf, online, or bespoke: made-to-measure clothing of long-lasting, quality fabrics, the experience of which many consider to be even pleasurable!
Long Tradition of Craftsmanship
Traditionally, providing bespoke hunting attire was a thriving industry. Casting my memory back to the early days when I started hunting in the 1950s in Ireland, hunt member’s standards of turnout was high, although it has to be said that many of us younger followers at the time wore flat tweed caps and a sports jacket; bespoke hunt livery was well beyond our parent’s budgets. There were also many followers, particularly young farmers making green horses, wearing their ordinary work clothes and wellington boots. Later in my hunting career, when I was able to finance my sport, I remember hunting with Major Victor McCalmont, Master of the Kilkenny Foxhounds (once hunted by the legendary American Master and huntsman Isaac Bell, 1908-21).
The Major lived at his magnificent estate, Mount Juliet, and took great pride when early in the afternoon his second horsemen arrived on the road with fresh horses for hunt staff, his wife Bunny, and himself. The second horsemen were dressed identically, immaculately turned out in bespoke grey hunt livery and matching grey bowler hats, with tack and horses gleaming. I have a photo of the Galway Blazers in the 1930s at a joint meet with the Scarteen Hounds when the local hireling man in Craughwell, Bernard Potter, was dressed in similar hunt livery. In those days, members wore a white waterproof apron at the meet to protect their white britches especially on a rainy day which was discarded when hounds moved off.
A correct hunting numnah was always saddle-shaped and never a square-cornered saddle cloth as you see often these days. And member’s leather boots were usually gleaming as they were boned with deer bone which gave them a glistening shine. They often sported a carnation in the buttonhole of their jackets. In Ireland, we still have many of our own master craftsmen supplying all forms of bespoke livery and tack to equestrians.
Frazers Tailors of Hospital, County Limerick
A few years ago, after hunting with the Scarteen Hounds in the village of Hospital, I visited one of our best known bespoke hunt clothing providers―the workshop of William Frazer, run at the time by William’s son Michael and Michael’s wife, Elsie. I was there to take photographs for an article. The shop had that unique feel that you experience in Berney Brothers and Tuttys in Ireland, and Locks and Lobbs in London. Little did I know that they were to be the last images taken of the famous old tailor shop. Four days later it was destroyed by fire.
Not only did Michael and Elsie Frazer lose all their stocks of material: bolts of Melton cloth, thirty-two-ounce Cavalry twill for hunting jackets and britches, flannel cloth for hunting jackets, material for evening tails, ladies and gentlemen’s suits and waistcoats, but also a fine collection of hunt buttons of packs all around the world of foxhunting.
And they lost another treasure―the precious black book of annotated contacts started by William Frazer in 1930 when he founded the business then known as Ryan’s the Tailors. It featured some of the best-known horsemen and women in the world who came to hunt with Lord Daresbury in County Limerick, Evan Williams in Tipperary, Michael Dempsey at the Galway Blazers, and Thady Ryan of the Scarteen. It contained contact information for Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis, Prince Johannes Lobkowicz, Captain Ronnie Wallace, the Earl and Countess Harrington, and many more.
Michael Frazer displays a photo from his wall of two longstanding customers: Aiden O’Connell and Dr. Martin Fleming (in scarlet).
Discreet fitting notes such as VB probably meant ‘prominent bottom or bosom,’ or VPB for ‘very prominent bottom or bosom.’ They lost all their client telephone numbers and addresses but fortunately, word spread, and clients contacted Michael and Elsie which allowed them to recreate some of their more current client list. All of the photo collection that adorned the walls were destroyed, like that of Dr Martin Fleming of the Blue Ridge Hunt in Virginia now living in Kinsale, County Cork, former Master of the Scarteen Dr Will Russell who also lives in Virginia, and Aidan ‘Suntan’ O’Connell in their hunt cutaway tails specially tailored by Frazer. In fact, when I published an article on the fire appealing for clients to contact them, Dr Fleming and his wife Sarah sent me an email from the boat they were sailing on from North to South Island in New Zealand! The American writer Margaret Cabel Self in her book ‘Irish Adventures’ remarked that hunting in a Frazer hunting jacket or britches is special, as the quality of the cloth kept one totally insulated from the weather, and the jacket came off best when it was in contact with thorns, wire or bushes.
I spoke to your Foxhunting Life editor Norm Fine whose measurements along with those of his wife Joan were among those inscribed by William Frazer in his black book many years earlier.
A visit to Frazer’s was always a pleasure on many levels―both practical and social. Entering the shop from the narrow sidewalk in the small village of Hospital was like stepping back in time. Mr. Frazer would greet you with a smile and quiet conversation before even thinking of discussing business. Who of your countrymen had visited his shop recently? What celebrity had just departed?
Fabric samples, bolts of cloth, and hand-scribbled notes covered much of the counters and other flat surfaces. On the walls were pinned notes, receipts, reminders, and customer orders in a helter-skelter of loose stacks to which Mr. Frazer would occasionally refer as you discussed when to return for a “fit-on” and when he could deliver the finished goods.
Leafing through his backlog, stopping and peering at one or two in particular, he might look up and say apologetically, “I promised Mrs. Onassis I would ship this to Virginia next month, so…”
But when you did receive your goods…what joy. The feel of the material, the thickness, the density of the weave…all promised warmth, comfort, and durability. Putting on such a coat or hacking jacket, the garment simply felt like part of your body. And the fabric…I often describe it as ‘bulletproof.’ The hacking jacket―would you like it double-vented, I recall him asking―I still wear as a sport coat. With its double-vent. Fifty years since.
Shortly after the fire, Michael and Elsie Frazer built new spacious premises on the same site in the village of Hospital which is well fitted out, and despite the Corona Virus they are deemed as an essential service and are busy making gentlemen’s and ladies’ made-to-measure coats, jackets, tails, britches, vests for hunting and hacking as well as suits, skirts, and slacks for casual wear.
For clients whose measurements are on file, a visit is often not even necessary. That’s the beauty of bespoke tailoring.
Watch for “Bespoke Hunting Attire: Part 2, Aiden O’Connell, The Art of Wearing.”
Posted April 4, 2021
Noel Mullins is a photojournalist, lifelong foxhunter, and author of The Dublin Horse Show, The Irish Hunter, In Search of the Kerry Beagle, and other books on Irish horse sport. Visit him on the web.