The Aran sweater was working clothing long before it was a souvenir. The stitches visitors now read as decoration, the diamonds, cables and moss, were the island's own vocabulary, knitted by women for the fishermen of the family. On Inis Meáin, the middle and least visited of the three islands, one company has spent fifty years proving that the real thing can also be the finest thing.
Inis Meáin Knitting Company was founded in 1976 by Tarlach de Blácam and his wife Áine Ní Chonghaile, a native islander, to give the island's young people a reason to stay. The island then had no electricity or running water, and goods still came in by currach. Today the company is the island's main employer, with a team of around twenty five drawn from a resident population of about one hundred and eighty, and some weavers of the first years still at their machines. Their son Ruairí and his wife Marie-Thérèse now run the business.
What changed the company was a hard lesson. The top retailers in New York and London told de Blácam that the rough Irish yarn of the early days belonged in carpets, not garments, so the company began sourcing the finest fibres it could find: cashmere from Italy, alpaca from South America, merino soft enough for the skin. The silhouettes stayed island; the hand feel became couture. Everything is still designed, made and hand finished on the island, and the island shop sells the full collection where it is made.
Back on the mainland, in Spiddal on the Connemara coast, Standún has been the west's outfitter for eighty years, a family business founded in 1946. It is the place to understand the breadth of honest Aran knitting, from handknit to machine made, at prices that reflect the difference. If the island ferry does not fit your route, Spiddal is the serious alternative, twenty minutes west of Galway city.
How to do it: the Inis Meáin shop rewards those already crossing to the islands, and the crossing itself is the point. Ferries run from Rossaveal, about an hour west of Galway, and the island asks for a full day. Try a sweater on in the shop where it was made, thirty miles out in the Atlantic, and every other Aran you see afterwards will be measured against it. Buy for life, because that is how these are made.
One practical note. The island shop keeps island hours, which follow the ferries and the season, so check before you cross. Sizes and colours on the island can differ from what the website shows, and the best pieces in small batches sell where they are made. If your trip does not reach the islands, Standún in Spiddal will treat you honestly, and the drive out along the Connemara coast is its own reward.