In 1933 Jim Kevin along with his partner Michael Howlin founded the Tailors and Outfitters known as, Kevin & Howlin Ltd, at 39 Nassau Street in Dublin, providing top quality clothing and tailoring while specializing in handwoven tweeds. In 1973 due to the redevelopment of the premises – Jim’s son, Noel, who had taken over the family firm, moved to No. 31 Nassau Street and decided to concentrate exclusively on Tweed becoming one of the premier purveyors of tweeds in Ireland.

The tweeds are handwoven by Magees of Donegal specially for Kevin & Howlin. Today the Kevin family is still the driving force, Noel and his wife Joan, their daughter Sarah-Jayne and his two sisters are all involved in the running of the business.

County Donegal in the North West corner of Ireland is famous for Handwoven Tweed a unique and beautiful cloth, woven by hand on wooden looms. Traditionally, Donegal Tweed was woven using the wool of Donegal sheep, today the use of pure new wool in hand weaving has expanded to include luxurious natural fibres such as a mixture of wool, mohair and cashmere. The looms are entirely man-

ually operated and it is a tribute to the original designers that the first recorded looms differ very little from those of today. From one generation to the next, the traditional skill and craftsmanship of handweaving has been passed down through families in Donegal and is one of the few ancient crafts surviving in the modern world. Weaving is still carried out in the cottages of Donegal – it is part of rural life along with farming and fishing.

Our Tweeds:

Use the controllers to the top right of the tweed image to move to the next or previous pattern.

The unique and individual mix of colours and patterns in our tweeds is the product of  andweaving and therefore not standardised. For this reason the guaranteed availabilty of many fabrics is limited to current stocks. This applies to fabric sold by the meter/yard as well as to made up garments.