Suits you Dylan

Apparently the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea will be exhibiting a suit worn by the Welsh poet shortly before his death in New York in 1953.

To some this might sound a bit like a barrel being scraped but I must confess to finding the morbidity of it quite appealing. Sadly punters will not be allowed to don the relic but we can content ourselves with looking for beer stains in the tweed.

The suit in question didn't actually belong to the poet but to a neighbour at the Chelsea Hotel - abstract painter Jorge Fick. Thomas was an inveterate borrower of other people's clothing even when the lender was of a different size - Vernon Watkins and Mervyn Peake being prime examples.

Of course the suit exhibition does make you wonder how far they are prepared to go with this kind of relic-peddling. A drunken Thomas once infamously urinated into a flower pot at a party given by Charlie Chaplin and attended by Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe and Thomas Mann. If you happen to know the current whereabouts of this flower pot please contact the Dylan Thomas Centre - I'm sure they'd be delighted to hear from you.

Meanwhile, if you're into dead men's clothing do not go gentle into that good Oxfam shop - get down to the DTC this August instead and enjoy some necrophilic sartorial thrills.