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'When you have a bit of wool on your back you can ride out the storm'
Louis Copeland, tailor to the nation, learned his trade stitch by stitch, drawing on a work ethic passed down to him from his eastern European ancestors. He's now the second Louis in a dynasty that he hopes will continue for as long as men wear suits.
Interview by Katy McGuinness


The Copeland's family story is one that the producers of Who Do You Think You Are? should take a look at. Hyman Copeland, Louis's Jewish grandfather, arrived in Dublin from Latvia in the early 1900s and worked as a trouser-maker, meeting his machinist wife through work. They married and set up home in Ormond Quay, where Louis Copeland Senior (Louis' father) was born in 1914 and brought up, with his sister, Rachel, as a Catholic like his mother.

Louis Copeland Senior followed Hyman into the clothing trade, coming up through the ranks, learning on the job and working in various workshops and factories around Dublin. He put in a stint with Ben Dunne Senior when he was sent to Cork to open a branch of Roches Stores in the '40s. Back in Dublin he moved with his family to Capel Street, working as a cutter by day and doing nixers at night, making suits from a small workshop he set up in the house. In the 1950s he took over the business from his employer and put his own name over the door down the street that is still home to Louis Copeland & Sons today – albeit with a swanky Celtic Tiger refit.

Louis's son Louis was born in 1949 and grew up, with two brothers and a sister, in relative prosperity in Gracepark Road, Drumcondra. Louis remembers his father as "a tailor, a cutter, not a businessman as such. It was all a bit hand to mouth but he did reasonably well – he'd have been well known around town. We had a good standard of living. My parents had a great social life, and they were very involved in music. My mother had a beautiful voice, she loved music, and they'd get dressed up and go to the Royal Theatre every Saturday night.

"I went to school in St Pat's in Drumcondra," Louis recalls, "and I used to get the bus into town after school – in those days you'd be allowed to do that kind of thing. I'd go in to the workshop every day from the time that I was about 10 years of age. I worked as a runner in the business, doing anything that needed to be done."
Louis's eldest brother, Paul, who was already working with his father in the family business, was killed in a motorbike accident in 1963. He was 19. "It was," Louis says, "devastating for the family."
Soon after, at the age of 14, Louis left school and enrolled in the technical school in Parnell Square to study tailoring and textiles.
"I fell into it, I suppose. There was no expectation that you would go to secondary school at that time. My father was keen for me to join the business."
There is a sense, though, that he regrets not having had the secondary-school education that his younger brother, Adrian, who now runs the Pembroke Street and Galway shops (with his son, also Adrian – these Copelands are nothing if not dynastic), was afforded. Adrian did his tailoring studies at night school, Louis tells me, and mightn't be as technically adept as him.

For the full Interview see the link below
www.tribune.ie/article/2009/aug/23/when-you-have-a-bit-of-wool-on-your-back-you-can-r/
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