I READ a report recently in The Sunday Times that ‘fast fashion’, a term for the impulse buying of clothes online and in stores where people wear the clothes just a few times before discarding and not recycling them, contributes 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year into the atmosphere.

In the UK alone, some 300,000 tons of clothing ends up in landfill – an interesting statistic to present to the public as they seem to think (incorrectly) that farmers are to blame for all emissions. The same can’t be said of hunt followers’ riding wear as it lasts for decades and is usually passed on from one generation to another.

However, from time to time, due to the rigors of the countryside, hunting folk occasionally have to replace items of their wardrobe or tack. The choices are usually buying clothes off the shelf, online or bespoke, where you have made-to-measure clothing which many consider is a pleasurable experience.

Craftsmanship and tradition

Traditionally, providing bespoke hunting attire was a thriving industry. Casting my memory back to the early days when I started hunting, hunt members’ standards of turnout were very high. Although it has to be said that for many of us younger hunt followers, we wore flat caps and a sports jacket as bespoke hunt livery was well beyond our and our parents’ budgets. There were also many followers, particularly those making young horses, wearing their ordinary work clothes and Wellington boots.

Later in my hunting career, I remember hunting with Major Victor McCalmont, master of the Kilkenny Foxhounds, and was so impressed when early in the afternoon, his two second horsemen arrived on the road with fresh horses. They were dressed identically, immaculately turned out in grey hunt livery and bowler hats, with tack and horses gleaming.

I have a photo of the Galway Blazers in the 1930s when the local hireling man in Craughwell, Bernard Potter, always dressed in similar hunt livery. In those days, members wore a white waterproof apron at the meet to protect their britches on a rainy day which was discarded when hounds moved off.

A correct hunting numnah was always saddle-shaped and never a saddle cloth as you see often these days. And members’ leather boots were usually gleaming as they were honed with deer bone which gave them a glistening shine, and they often sported a carnation in the buttonhole of their jackets. In Ireland, we thankfully still have many of our own master craftsmen supplying all forms of bespoke livery and tack to equestrian sports.

Frazers Tailors

A few years ago after hunting with the Scarteen Hounds in the village of Hospital in Co Limerick, I visited one of our best known bespoke hunt clothing providers, the workshop of William Frazer, to take some photographs. It has that unique feel that you get in Berney Brothers, Tuttys, and Locks and Lobbs in London.

Little did I know that they were to be the last images taken of the famous tailor shop, as four days later, the shop was destroyed by fire. Not alone did Michael and Elsie Frazer lose all their precious stock of bolts of Melton cloth, 32-ounce Cavalry twill for hunting jackets and britches, flannel cloth for hunting jackets, and material for hunt ball tails and ladies and gentlemen’s suits and waistcoats, but also a fine collection of hunt buttons of packs all around the world of foxhunting.

The precious black book of contacts, started by Willam Frazer in 1930 when he founded the business then known as Ryan’s, this tailors’ book must have read like a Who’s Who of clients. It featured some of the best known horsemen and women in the world that came to hunt with Lord Darebury in Co Limerick, Evan Williams in Tipperary, Michael Dempsey in the Galway Blazers and Thady Ryan of the Scarteen. They included Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis, Prince Johannes Lobkowicz, Captain Ronnie Wallace, the Earl and Countess Harrington and many more. Discreet fitting notes, such as VB, probably meant ‘prominent bottom or bosom’, or VPB for ‘very prominent bottom or bosom’. They lost all their clients’ telephone numbers and addresses but fortunately, word spread, and clients contacted Michael and Elsie which allowed them to recreate some of their client list.

All of their photo collections were destroyed, such as that of Dr Martin Fleming of the Blue Ridge Hounds in Virginia, (now living in Kinsale), 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 Frazers. 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 the 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.

Shortly after the fire, Michael and Elsie Frazer built a new spacious premises on the same site in the village of Hospital which is well fitted out. Despite the coronavirus, they are deemed as an essential service and are busy making gentlemens’ and ladies’ made-to-measure suits, skirts and slacks, casual jackets, blazers, hacking jackets, hunting jackets, vests, britches and hunt ball tails. They have all the precautions in place for safely measuring clients, and for those that they have measurements on file, it is just a case of phoning them and placing their orders. That’s the beauty of bespoke tailoring.

Aidan O’Connell

I have some great memories and so many amusing stories of travelling to different countries to report for The Irish Field on hunting with perhaps Frazer’s most prominent client, Aidan ‘Suntan’ O’Connell. I captured images of Aidan wearing bespoke tailoring in all aspects of the sport and social events as he has perhaps one of the most complete bespoke wardrobes that I know of. The well-known fashion photographer John Minoprio once remarked to me that every time he passes the statue of Beau Brummel, the Regency arbiter of men’s fashion in Jermyn Street in London, he is reminded of Aidan O’Connell.

Taking a personal pride in his appearance and being dressed for the occasion is something Aidan has done all his life. Even in his student days in secondary school, he wore a three-piece pinstripe suit and a bow tie and when he attended University College Cork he drove a Jaguar car – it made him even more popular with his fellow students interested in horseracing or hunting as they were sure of a lift. He took UK society by storm in 1978 when he trained a winner at Towester, dressed in a grey Saville Row bespoke grey pin-stripped suit, red bow tie and a white Fedora hat. Lady Hesketh was so impressed that she invited him to dinner. Aidan’s grandmother, a lady ahead of her time, had a saying, ‘The feathers make the bird’.

Hunt colours

To be awarded your hunt colours was usually a very prestigious event, and for many hunts, these were awarded only to the few. In fact, somebody had to pass away into that great hunting field in the sky before another eligible member was asked to take their place. When Lord Daresbury was master of the County Limerick Foxhounds – a time considered as the heyday of hunting in Co Limerick – he was very selective as to who was awarded hunt colours.

In 1979, he summoned O’Connell and said,: “As some members are retiring, we better keep up the tradition and you should go and see Frazers and get measured for your red hunt tails and I will organise the brass hunt buttons”.

Not alone were members expected to turn out properly on the hunting field, but it was also important to have a tuxedo jacket as black tie dinners after a hunt were the order of the day. Aidan recalled that one season after hunting 40 days in Limerick, he attended 40 black tie dinners, and he remembers a season when he hunted 96 days, with 36 different packs, on 46 different horses in seven countries.

On another occasion, O’Connell hunted Monday with the Duhallow, Tuesday with the Scarteen, Wednesday with the County Limerick, Thursday with the Clares, Friday with the Stonehall Harriers when taxi driver Johnny Conway drove him to Shannon Airport (still in hunting attire) and he flew to Florida and hunted Saturday and Sunday with the South Creek Hunt (including a hunt ball Saturday night), flew back to Shannon and was on a horse with the Limerick Foxhounds on Monday morning at 11.20am!

As Aidan hunted usually 95 days in a season, one can understand why he needed a specialised hunting tailor to keep him supplied with bespoke hunting attire. He has also been awarded hunt colours of the Genesee Valley Hunt in the USA, the Frazer Valley Hunt in Canada, the Asbach Hunt and the Hamburger Schleppjagdverein Hunt in Germany, and he keeps those jackets with friends in those hunt countries ready to wear when he is visiting.

Wardrobe change

For hunting attire, Aidan wears red double-breasted hunt tails with County Limerick Foxhounds green collar and brass hunt buttons, red or bottle green waistcoat, butterfly collar and stock, with white britches by Frazers, and champagne-topped riding boots with white leather garter straps made by Tuttys in Kildare and Davies in Wales.

As a result of the master of the Orange County Hunt in the USA not allowing Aidan to hunt in his County Limerick colours, the story has gone down in hunt folklore as ‘The Peacock Lost his Feathers’, he designed three other sets of double-breasted hunting tails, one green and another champagne-coloured hunting tails with Prince of Wales cuffs and a Prussian collar and also a charcoal grey set of hunting tails with similar red cuffs and collar also made by Frazers.

However, Aidan had the last laugh when the Orange County master came to hunt in Limerick when the same master tried to follow Aidan over a huge wet drain and he ended up swimming in it. Aidan looked down at him from the saddle and said: “The peacock still has its feathers, have you got your flippers?”

For leisure, he occasionally wears a blazer and cravat, or a black cape with a metal clasp made by Frazers, and his silk top hat made by Patey in London. His frock coats with County Limerick Foxhounds green collar and hunt buttons, made by Frazers, can also be worn autumn hunting particularly when he is travelling, but with a brown bowler hat made by Patey.

For evening wear or when he is invited as guest speaker at a function, he wears a white tuxedo or blue velvet smoking jacket finished off with satin lapels, and a buttonhole carnation that is a different colour for each day of the week.

He rode three times in the Grand National at Aintree and he wears a long fawn Cashmere coat and Fedora hat going racing, always topped off by a bow tie and his signature carnation and handkerchief.

Final fitting

Talking to him a few weeks ago, Aidan was upbeat about 2021 and informed me that he was just going to visit Frazers to have his final fitting for his new blazers, one navy and the other charcoal grey, fitted with sets of County Limerick Hunt brass buttons. He maintains that there are few pleasures in life that compare to getting fitted for a bespoke suit, blazer or hunting attire, as the sheer feel of the quality fabric and the snug fit have an uplifting effect when finished off by his trade mark carnation.

He even had Frazers make his wedding attire in 1997 which were matching pin-striped double-breasted suits, and also a matching side saddle apron for his wife and matching custom black silk top hats which made quite an impression as they rode from the church in Adare to Adare Manor for the reception.

Now that is what I mean by bespoke tailoring, well-fitting, styled and a unique and long lasting experience that lingers on – Grandmother was wise when she said ‘The feathers make the bird’!