About Kevin & Howlin
In 1936 Jim
Kevin along with his partner Michael Howlin founded the Tailors and Outfitters
known as, Kevin & Howlin Ltd, at 39 Nassau Street in Dublin, providing top
quality clothing and tailoring while specializing in handwoven tweeds. The
tweeds are Handwoven in Donegal especially for Kevin & Howlin
In 1973 due
to the redevelopment of the premises – Jim’s son, Noel, who had taken over the
family firm, o. 31 Nassau Street and decided to concentrate exclusively on
Tweed becoming one of the premier purveyors of tweeds in Ireland.
Wed, Oct
31, 2001, 00:00
A brochure
for Kevin & Howlin's, one of Nassau Street's oldest tenants, claims
"show me a visitor who has not returned from Ireland with a tweed cap or
jacket and I'll show you someone who has never set foot in Kevin &
Howlin's". And it's a claim borne out by a regular stream of tourists
tempted inside by window displays draped with the best of hand-woven Irish
tweed.
The Kevin
family has traded on Nassau Street since the 1930s, when James Kevin went into
partnership with Michael Howlin at number 39, a few doors further up from the
present premises. Next door was Johnston's umbrella shop. Jammets restaurant
and Browne & Nolan were close neighbours.
The shop
moved to its current address when number 39, along with its neighbours, was
compulsarily purchased in the 1970s for redevelopment.
How Kevin
& Howlin survived when those other legendary emporiums have long since gone
has much to do with the fact that the business has become a family dynasty.
James Kevin
became sole owner when his partner Michael Howlin died. James's son, Noel, took
over the running of the shop when his father died in 1974, helped by his
sisters Viva Freyne and Joan Anderson. Their mother, Sara, is still involved in
the business. A bevy of nieces and nephews come in to help on Saturdays.
The smart
matt black frontage and panelled windows have an up-to-the-minute look and
Joan's displays are contemporary chic.
Once
inside, the shop has all the appeal of a traditional Irish drapery store, with
bales of tweed leaning against the counter and racks laden with Donegal's
finest. There are rich-hued tweed jackets, overcoats, three-piece suits and
every style of hat for the country and city gent. Glimpses of patchwork,
crimson and canary yellow in the midst of a row of sombre-coloured waistcoats suggests
the occasional extrovert customer.
The hats
are top sellers, says Viva. Young women and men go for the Gatsbys, while flat
caps and trilbys with feathers are popular with older customers. Crushable
tweed hats that can be rolled up into a pocket are useful buys for any age
group at £36.50 (€46.35).
Trading
within a stone's throw of such formidable opposition as Kilkenny Design,
Blarney Woollen Mills and Avoca Handweavers doesn't faze Noel Kevin, who
insists that shops in the Nassau Street area complement each other.
"Kilkenny
sends people down to us and we pass customers over to Kennedy & McSharry
for shirts and ties. It's a very personal service and all part of selling
Ireland. We're in the front line here."
While
regular Irish customers are the backbone of sales at Kevin & Howlin,
Europeans have overtaken Americans as the highest spending tourists, says Viva
Freyne.
"The
Italians are very big buyers of tweed by the metre. They have great women
tailors in Italy and they love the subtle colours in our Donegal tweed. Ladies
jackets are big too. We have a lot of English coming in because, with the value
of sterling, prices are very cheap."
Like Noel,
Viva has worked in the shop since her student days, apart from a break to rear
her family. Their sister Joan dresses the windows and they have a regular
assistant, David Hanly, who knows the business inside out.
Viva looks
back with nostalgia to the time when the shop employed a tailor and
seamstresses.
"Paddy
Foley worked for us for almost 60 years and Miss Doyle did alterations
downstairs. Cruise liners were a big part of the business in past times and we
still have a big export trade. Nowadays, there's very little tailoring - all
items are ready-mades, because people want things quickly."
Noel, who
was always addressed as "Mister Noel" in the old days, attends to the
more conservative male customers, who prefer their business to be conducted
"man to man". With a core Irish customer base, regular export orders
to the US and Europeans investing in hand-woven Irish tweeds, business at Kevin
& Howlin is steady.
The only
hope is to specialise, explains Noel. "We're not competing with the big
department stores. We're catering for people who want good quality Irish goods.
"We
get a lot of young Scandinavian and German customers into the shop because
everything Irish is good now - the pubs and the craic and the clothes."
The only
threat to Kevin & Howlin comes from a different source - rising rents and
its increasing vulnerability to the financial muscle of the big UK-based
multiples looking for a prime pitch in the city centre.
"Rents
are getting higher all the time," says Noel. "There'll always be
someone wanting this little spot because we're on the tourist street. My rent
has gone up hugely in recent years.
"It
was revised upwards in 2000, before the big bust. They seem to pull an amount
out of thin air. The next increase is in 2005 and I might just go with
it."
Donegal
Tweed is a woven tweed manufactured in County Donegal, Ireland. Originally all
handwoven, it is now mostly machine woven and has been since the introduction
of mechanised looms in the 1950s/1960s. Donegal has for centuries been producing
tweed from local materials in the making of caps, suits and vests. Towards the
end of the eighteenth century, The Royal Linen Manufacturers of Ulster
distributed approximately six thousand flax spinning wheels and sixty looms for
weaving to various Donegal homesteads. These machines helped establish the
homespun tweed industry in nineteenth-century Donegal.Although Donegal tweed
has been manufactured for centuries it took on its modern form in the 1880s,
largely due to the pioneering work of English philanthropist Alice Rowland
Hart.
While the
weavers in County Donegal produce a number of different tweed fabrics,
including herringbone and check patterns, the area is best known for a
plain-weave cloth of differently-coloured warp and weft, with small pieces of
yarn in various colours woven in at irregular intervals to produce a heathered
effect. Such fabric is often labelled as "donegal" (with a lowercase "d")
regardless of its provenance.
Along with
Harris Tweed manufactured in the Scottish Highlands, Donegal is the most famous
tweed in the world. While tweed in Ireland is by no means exclusive to Donegal,
Vawn Corrigan confirms Donegal as the heartland of Irish Tweed . It was used
in several of the fashion designer Sybil Connolly's pieces.
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