Up until the latter part of the 20th century, most islanders (total population 1,218) were still engaged in either fishing or farming – each one presenting a formidable set of challenges. But times have changed all that and tourism is now the main source of income for most. Subsistence farmers along with their livestock have all but disappeared, and only a few fishermen still uphold the same traditions sustained by their forbearers.

Yet, with so many ways of old having all but vanished, the Aran sweater flourishes as never before – thanks in part to the souvenir seeking tourist who can nab an “Aran” sweater – Made in China – with wool from Australia, like it was a pashmina from a New York City street vendor.

There is also this interesting bit on the wool that Inis Meain uses for their sweaters:

Although their sweaters are elegantly designed, and carried by the finest stores, from trendy boutiques in Tokyo to high-end shops in Milan, the wool non longer comes from the local sheep, in fact not even Irish sheep. Tarlach recalls, “By the early 1980s we had to stop using Irish wool, it was just too scratchy for the average consumer.” Now, the f wool they use has crested to the luxury of cashmere and alpaca, almost all of which is imported from Michell & Co. in Peru; a leading manufacturer in luxury yarns.

Continue reading more.

Related posts:
Aran Sweater Myths
Inis Meáin Kniting Company

It is sometimes said that each fisherman (or his family) had a jumper with a unique design, so that if he drowned and was found, maybe weeks later, on the beach, his body could be identified. This misconception may have originated with J.M. Synge’s 1904 play Riders to the Sea, in which the body of a dead fisherman is identified by the hand-knitted stitches on one of his garments. However, even in the play, there is no reference to any decorative or Aran-type pattern. The garment referred to is a plain stocking and it is identified by the number of stitches, the quote being “it’s the second one of the third pair I knitted, and I put up three score stitches, and I dropped four of them”. There is no record of any such event ever having taken place, nor is there any evidence to support there being a systematic tradition of family patterns.

Kate Davies, writer and knitter, explores this a bit more in an interesting piece she wrote on needled:

While Gahan encouraged the talented knitters of rural Ireland in their creation of elaborate báinín ganseys, Ó Síocháin invented myths of ancient origin for the sweaters in his publications about the Aran Islands. In his book Aran: Islands of Legend , for example, Ó Síocháin footnotes the misleading idea that “the Aran gansey has always been an unfailing source of identification of Islandmen lost at sea” with a reference to his own company “full particulars regarding the handcraft products of the Islands can be obtained from Galway Bay Products, Ltd.”

It’s okay to have one or two of these types of sweaters in your wardrobe for wearing during the holiday season (they’re just as odd as madras jackets, white bucks, and critter chinos). I have this shawl collar cardigan from J.Crew that I had purchased on a bet, and it gets worn only a couple of times a year.