Donegal fabric spins a great company yarn

TradeNames: Now in its 137th year, Magee holds a sterling reputation for unvarying quality in the great fashion houses of the world. Michael Finlan reports

In 1866 John Magee opened a small drapery shop in Donegal town and began filling the shelves with bolts of hand-woven tweed he bought from weavers on his regular visits to fairs around the county.

He sold the distinctive fabrics, with their herring-bone and salt and pepper designs, to tailors who marvelled at cloth that could be fashioned into garments alive with the natural colours of the countryside.

Robert Temple, a farmer's son from Killygordon and a first cousin of John Magee, joined the firm as an apprentice in 1870, and together they began building a clothing enterprise that 137 years later holds a sterling reputation for unvarying high quality and reliability in the great fashion houses of the world.

When John Magee retired in 1909 he was already immortalised with his surname forever attached to the labels on the fabrics and garments of the business he started. His cousin, Robert Temple, bought over the company on John Magee's retirement and continued to drive its dynamic evolution.

The business has remained in the family, Robert Temple's son, Howard, coming into it in 1931. He launched innovations that ensured its survival in the face of upheavals in the garment industry after the second World War when Britain's giant clothing factories flooded the market with commonplace 50-bob ready-made suits for the newly demobbed soldiers.

Howard is 90 now and still takes a keen interest in the business over which his son, 52-year-old Lynn Temple, presides as chairman. When I talked with Lynn at the Magee factory in Donegal town recently, he wore a smart Burgundy-coloured moleskin casual jacket, part of the Magee autumn collection - a voguish look in harmony with the contemporary styling that now enhances Magee's weaving tradition universally seen in its tweed sports jackets.

"The sad thing about Donegal tweed is that, in Ireland, it is perceived as old-fashioned and conservative, whereas it is no such thing," Lynn says. "With correct use and design, it can be very contemporary. We have always had colour and we're a long way from the boring old grey suit."

But then Magee has always kept up-to-date. At the end of the second World War, Howard Temple could see that the tailoring trade was in decline, giving way to off-the-peg buying, and that to survive, the company would have to get into ready-mades. With their reputation for image and colour already established, Magee began manufacturing more colourful suits and jackets, a move ahead of its time and astoundingly successful.

In the post-war years the company heavily invested in advertising, coining a famous slogan "Magee Irish Thornproofs" that still prompts people to make enquiries from all over the world. A warehouse that had been opened in Belfast in the 1920s to overcome customs difficulties was turned into a factory which worked hand-in-hand with the Donegal operation.

"My uncle, the late Robert Harris, was perhaps the first person to team up Donegal tweed with some of the top Irish designers, such as Sybil Connolly, in the 1960s," Lynn said.

"They put Donegal tweed on the world stage as a fashion fabric. Up to then it was primarily a utilitarian fabric, keeping the warmth in and the cold and damp out. People like Sybil Connolly really gave it this stylish appeal."

It is no longer tweed alone that Magee is weaving in Donegal, but a range of other fabrics such as alpaca, cashmere, lamb's wool and a mixture of these for autumn collections along with linens, silks and fine wool for spring.

These are not only used in Magee clothes manufacturing but sold across the world to such couturiers as Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Aquascutum, Robert Moss, Max Mara, Etro, Tommy Hilfiger, Canali and many others. "These people are making the most gorgeous garments from Magee fabrics and selling them at the top end of the world's fashion trade," says Lynn Temple.

In the 1970s and 1980s Magee faced stiff competition in the menswear market from the Italians and Germans who were producing smart, well-made but clinically-produced clothing compared with Magee's tweedy and old-fashioned look.

"We really had to re-invent ourselves and appeal to the business segment and the more stylish younger person," says Lynn. "It was an uphill battle but today you can walk into any Magee outlet and find very stylish, up-to-date suits, jackets and trousers, and a lot more unstructured garments which we've designed in response to the market becoming more casual."

Despite the continual up-dating of style, Magees still proudly uphold the Donegal tweed tradition, with 50 people working the looms in the weaving mill and 12 more interweaving the warp and the weft on hand looms in their homes. The Temple family has a home in Mountcharles where Lynn's Armagh-born wife, Elizabeth, has created a magnificent walled garden that is open to the public.

A daughter, Charlotte, is attending cadet college in the Curragh, son Patrick, who is likely to go into the business, is studying engineering at Trinity, and the youngest, Rosie, is still in secondary school.