Dylan Thomas Suit 1953

The suit that Dylan Thomas was wearing in the days before his death in New York in 1953. Dylan was on his fourth lecture tour of America at the time. Jorge Fick, the owner of the suit, was an American abstract painter who was storing his clothes in the Chelsea Hotel, the same hotel in which Dylan was staying. Dylan is said to have borrowed the suit because, characteristically, he had run out of clean clothes.

Jorge was sharing an apartment with Paul Kagol, one of a group of poetry students. Jorge was working on the subway at the time. It was Paul who actually loaned the suit to Thomas.

Jorge Fick and his friends in New York in the early fifties were all students at the famous Black Mountain College where they were studying poetry under Charles Olsen. Jorge was a painter who was also very interested in poetry. The painters all congregated at the Cedar Street Bar and the poets at Dylan’s favourite pub, the White Horse Tavern, but the groups often moved between the two pubs.

Over fifty years later, Jorge Fick’s widow, Judy Perlman, contacted the Dylan Thomas Centre and kindly offered the suit as a donation to the Centre’s Dylan Thomas Collection.

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