When my youngest offspring needed an outfit for his debs recently, I was pleased to learn that he had opted for sustainable fashion, as second-hand clothes are now known. Relieved too, because if he needed something new, I’d have been paying for it.
But I was astonished when his chosen ensemble turned out to be an old suit of mine, the first I ever bought, from the mid-1980s.
I was even more surprised to see that not only was it a perfect fit, it still looked pretty damn good for its age. Considering how they’d both turned out, I wasn’t sure which I was more proud of: my son or it.
Before writing this, I asked Daniel if he’d mind me outing the suit’s backstory (in fact – but don’t tell him this – I’d already posted a picture on Twitter, where it got 80,000 views).
Duke of Hazard – Frank McNally on the literary pubs (and restaurants) of Dublin 2
Look Behind You – Frank McNally on the surprising second life of a 1980s suit
Breffni Benefactor – Frank McNally on the revolutionary largesse of Edgar Allan Poe’s Irish ancestor
Goodness and Guinness – Tony Corcoran on pioneering doctor Sir John Lumsden
Not at all, he said. As a member of Gen Z and the veteran of many Junk Kouture competitions at school, he positively revels in wearing vintage clothes.
“It’s totally cool now to say: this is my Dad’s old suit from the 1980s,” he assured me. Then, as I fought back tears of gratitude, he added: “By the way, the first instalment of college fees is due Friday.”
Of course, seeing the suit worn anew brought back a flood of memories of the grim decade in which it made its debut. I bought it for a Civil Service job interview, one of the few career opportunities still available in Ireland at that time.
And I recall that if you were a young man taking your first steps up the finery ladder then, you usually went to Smart Brothers, where a shiny suit would cost at most £80.
But for some reason, probably notions, I went instead to a place called Horton’s in Wicklow Street (the shop is long gone since but located close to where, in the brave new Ireland of 2024, I recently paid €6.50 for an almond croissant).
This was a risky venture for a country boy newly arrived in the city. A year or two earlier, on a day trip to Dublin, I had been persuaded by a smooth salesman in Clery’s to buy a jacket that was several sizes too big for me.
It was like the one David Byrne of Talking Heads wore famously soon afterwards in Stop Making Sense. Unlike David Byrne, alas, I didn’t have the excuse of being an avant-garde rock musician.
Fortunately, the man in Horton’s did not take advantage of my innocence. Sizing me up, he pointed me towards a grey, faintly pinstriped suit by “Mr Harry”, a brand name then unknown to me.
It cost a steep £120 (or just over 18 almond croissants in the new money): two weeks’ wages at the time. But when I put it on, it looked every penny of the price.
The salesman further recommended a “wine” tie (that sounded more sophisticated in the 1980s: today, thanks to verbal inflation, it would be “burgundy”).
“Perfect,” he declared of the combined result. And hardly recognising the sharp-dressed man looking back at me from the mirror, I couldn’t disagree.
Mr Harry is long gone too now. But it had been around for at least a decade then, apparently. When I looked it up in The Irish Times archive, I found a piece from 1972 by fashion correspondent Gabrielle Williams, who tried to define the brand’s look.
It was “classical,” she suggested, but “not too classical”. Adopting the lingo of the era, she added that the clothes had “a youthfulness and a modishness in their styling” which appealed to men “who want to be up to date without actually swinging it.”
At this remove of decades, I can’t honestly recall now whether my ambitions with the suit extended to swinging it, or even what that would have involved.
Perhaps it referred to the flamboyant disco move, immortalised by John Travolta, whereby one propelled a jacket above one’s head when entering the dance floor.
But if you tried that in a Dublin nightclub at the time, the bouncers would have beaten you up.
In any case, I swung the job interview at least, thereby becoming an Adult Executive Officer. This pitched me into the glamour that was the Department of Social Welfare, circa 1984: one of the few areas of the Irish economy then booming.
If my suit could talk now, it would probably have a lot of boring stories about our short-lived glory days, such as they were.
But as it recovers from decades-long incarceration in a wardrobe, it might also struggle to describe the Ireland into which it has re-emerged, a very different country from the one where it made its debut.
Anyway, I’m delighted the suit has found a new lease of life. I’m proud that, helped by the long sabbatical, its working career has now spanned over 40 years. We came through some tough times together, it and me. I find it strangely reassuring that at least one of us is still in good shape.