Seventy five years as part of the fabric of Galway

Just a few short years ago, husband and wife team, Ger and Anne Ó Máille were sorely tempted to shut up their renowned city shop.The high-end Irish design outlet, based in Galway’s High Street, but with a worldwide customer base, had been adversely affected by the global downturn and both Anne and Ger were close enough to retirement age that shutting up would have made sense.

But Anne, a woman who is made of stern stuff, felt it would have been the wrong thing to do, and a betrayal of the family legacy.

After all, the shop had been founded in 1938, during Ireland’s Economic War with England and when World War II was looming, which meant that there was very little money in the country.

“It was a time of terrible poverty and also great ill health,” says Anne, adding that she has always “been fascinated by the history of the family and the shop”.

Thanks to their decision to fight on, the business – which is most famous for dressing the cast of the cult film, The Quiet Man – now celebrates its 75th year amid signs of an upturn across the globe.

And as Anne stresses, it’s not the first time Ó Máilles faced tough circumstances.

The shop was founded by Pádraic Ó Máille, one of a family of nine brothers and two sisters from Brackloon, Ballyglunin. Having trained in the drapery business in Castlebar, he felt there was room in Galway for a business based on hand-woven tweeds and woollens.

Family lore has it that he drove to Donegal – which was renowned for its weaving – and bought huge 60-yard-long bolts of tweed, which were delivered to the new premises on Dominick Street for the opening in 1938.

Pádraic hired tailors and seamstresses and the Ó Máilles tailored “their way through the war years and later”, says Anne.

Three of Pádraic’s siblings worked in the business; Stiofáin, Seán and Mary (who was better known as Aunty Sis) and the shop established a wide customer base, ranging from farmers and fishermen in Connemara and Aran, who came in to be fitted for their tweed trousers, to Anglo-Irish landowners and the growing tourist market.

“Pádraic had a great reputation as being a charming Irish man and he looked after people,” says Anne, listing off a client list that included Brian Guinness (Lord Moyne), the McCalmont family of Kilkenny’s Mount Juliet, broadcaster Éamonn de Buitléar, artist Louis le Brocquy, founder of Claddagh Records Garech de Brún and his father Lord Oranmore, as well as film director John Huston and his sons.

The Ó Máilles offered these people a bespoke service and one which was highly convenient.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune