Top tailor cuts loose: Denis Darcy calls it a day after 57 years

WHEN DENIS Darcy hangs up his scissors for the final time this month, Dublin will lose one of its most outstanding tailors. The loss will be felt not only by countless private customers but also by the Irish theatre and movie world, where Darcy has earned a reputation for the excellence and accuracy of his costume work.

“It’s the end of an era,” says designer Peter O’Brien. “His technical work is fantastic and he is really knowledgeable. I don’t know what any of us are going to do.” It’s a view echoed by Emmy Award-winning costume designer Joan Bergin.

When Darcy started his business in 1967 there were at least a dozen tailoring businesses in Capel Street “and possibly even more”, he recalls. The late 1970s was when the tailoring trade started to suffer. “Suits off the peg started to get better and cheaper and that was the beginning of the end.”

Now 70, he feels it’s time to call it a day. In December he will head to Australia with his wife for Christmas and “after that I don’t know what I will do. I have never made plans”.

Darcy, who is from Ringsend, left primary school at 13 and trained at the School of Tailoring and Textiles on Parnell Square, becoming an apprentice at 15 with Louis Copeland snr on Capel Street, where he stayed for seven years.

His career in costume-making took off in the 1990s after he was asked to make suits for Congreve’s The Double Dealer at the Gate. Since then he has worked with the Gate, the Abbey, Druid and Rough Magic as well as on movies such as Breakfast on Pluto and, currently, the BBC crime drama Ripper Street, made in Clancy Barracks.

“Costumes make you think and I always wanted to expand my knowledge. I like to be as authentic as possible,” he says, showing me several books on period garment-cutting.

A good tailor knows how to cut and hide any imperfections a customer may have. “I will measure the customer, I will cut for the customer and I will tailor for the customer. Go to any shop and someone will measure you, someone else will cut and someone else tailor without ever seeing the man. I see it from start to finish. Knowing how much ease to put into the garment comes from experience; it’s something you just do.”

A two-piece made-to- measure suit would start at €750 and prices depended on the cloth.

He is phlegmatic about his retirement. “Will I be the last of the tailors? I don’t know, but it’s been 57 years learning and I am still learning. Twenty years ago they said that there would be no tailors left, and who knows, maybe in another 20 years’ time they’ll be saying the same.”

Visit the online slideshow of Denis Darcy's last days at his workshop at irishtimes.com/slideshows