Aran jumper

Originally the jumpers were knitted using unscoured wool that retained its natural oils (lanolin) which made the garments water-resistant and meant they remained wearable even when wet.

[1] In the case of Ireland, Britain and Australia, "jumper" is the standard word, "jersey" is used in South Africa and New Zealand, whereas "sweater" is mainly found in tourist shops and in North America.

[5] Most historians agree[6] that far from being an ancient craft, Aran knitting was invented as recently as the 1890s and early 1900s, when the Congested Districts Board sought to improve the fishing industry in the Islands.

Fishermen and their wives from other regions in Britain and Ireland came to help train the islanders in better fishing and fish-processing skills, bringing with them an existing tradition of knitted guernsey jumpers.

Vogue magazine carried articles on the garment in the 1950s, and jumper exports from the west of Ireland to the United States began in the early 1950s.

The development of the export trade during the 1950s and 1960s took place after P. A. Ó Síocháin organised an instructor, with the help of a grant from the Congested Districts Board for Ireland, to go to the islands and teach the knitters how to make garments to standard international sizings.

The national exposure and the rising popularity of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem fuelled the demand for Aran jumpers even more.

[8] The Aran jumper had a fashion moment in July 2020, when Taylor Swift wore the garment in a photo-shoot that accompanied the release of her album, Folklore.

[10] This misconception may have originated with John Millington Synge's 1904 play Riders to the Sea, in which the body of a dead Islander is identified by his hand-knitted socks.

Machine knitted jumpers tend to use finer wool, cotton, or synthetic yarn and have less complex patterns, since many of the traditional stitches cannot be reproduced this way.