City Lives

Fashion, fun and faith the keys to Martin’s success

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City Lives –  Bernie Ní Fhlatharta meets Martin Feeney, an expert on dressing men for formal occasions

Weddings have never been as popular. If anything they are getting fancier and more elaborate – not that Martin Feeney is complaining.

Martin has run a formal menswear shop — Martin Feeney Formal Wear — at 21 Abbeygate Street Upper for almost 33 years. In that time he has worked through two recessions and although the black-tie ball business declined greatly with the recent downturn, the wedding business remained stable.

That wedding business is booming again, while Martin says the black-tie events are making a slow comeback and of course there is an annual demand on formal wear for Holy Communions and graduations.

A native of Grange, Athenry, Martin came into the city after he left school to work in the retail trade. He knew what he wanted to do and he cut his teeth with the best of them — Joe Corless in Dominick Street and Martin Brennan in Shop Street in a premises now occupied by Elle’s, a coffee shop Martin frequents almost daily, because he admits to liking certain rituals in his life.

A neat, well-dressed man, he loves working and living in the city and has never considered running a business anywhere except the heart of town where the pace and buzz energise him on a daily basis.

“I wanted to open my own shop and in the beginning, it was retail only, menswear, but then one day, I bumped into Johnny Gleeson, who ran a drapery in Woodquay and had started dress hire and he advised me to get a few dress suits in.

“I got about a dozen plain black suits in thinking even that was too much and that they would just be sitting there, but that side of the business got so busy that eventually, I got out of retail to concentrate on dress hire. If Johnny hadn’t stopped me that day . . . well, I might still be in retail!”

It’s possible that Martin mightn’t have survived the recession had he stuck with retail only, as it seems that every week in the city another shop closes down.

He can’t believe that his is now the second longest-running business on Upper Abbeygate Street (Paddy Flynn, the auctioneer is the longest).

“When I came on the street first, it was a mix of shops and private houses and everyone was so nice and welcoming to me. Mrs Flanagan [whose husband Frank worked in Moons and whose parents were the Shapiros who ran an ironmongers] was one of the first people at my door.

“I have seen so many changes on the street, so many people come and go and so many of the elderly residents have passed away.”

He fondly remembers people like Bridie and Andy McGinley who ran a boarding house that provided daily lunches for male workers, Greally’s chemist further down the street, Mrs Lillis who ran a general drapery on the corner and many others. In fact, Martin started documenting the history of the street, as in who occupied which building, but says he now needs to update it.

His own shop has seen changes too. In the beginning he only used the ground floor, but following a fire he refurbished the premises to make better use of the upstairs.

“I could do with some more space even now but we’re limited where we are. At the time of the fire, I had been in Limerick with the John Player Tops quarter finals doing costumes when I got the news about it. Well, it was an electrical fault in the shop and it smouldered all night. Luckily, the windows were shut or the whole street might have gone up including the Tribune,” he says referring to our own newspaper offices, which back onto his property!

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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