You must save some of your energy and time for O’Máille’s, the other Galway ‘institution’. It was established 50 years ago, and Mary, one of the original family founders, still works in the shop today, selling brilliant tweed off large bales by the yard. O’Máille’s have their own cottage knitters producing a vast array of Aran sweaters in the traditional white, and also in a range of soft ‘fashion colours’, from size 18″ – for newborn infants, would you believe, up to 59″ for the very portly.
For real toughies, they still produce a range in the traditional unwashed oily yarn straight from the sheep, which keeps any weather or wet out. The range of men’s hand-woven tweed jackets (some of the tweed is even hand-spun) goes from size 38″ to 54″. Women’s wear is there as well. A shop to give time to – including time to talk!
This, incidentally, is the store which supplied the clothes for the film ‘The Quiet Man’.