Aran Sweater
- Eric Langlois
- Dec 13, 2024
- 3 min read
In the 2019 murder mystery film Knives Out, Chris Evans plays the grandson of a wealthy Massachusetts mystery author who died under suspicious circumstances. The victim’s nurse meets with Evans’ character at a small-town New England diner to ask for his help to solve the crime, where he is knocking back Nantucket-brewed beers in a handsomely distressed off-white sweater.
This sweater was the second big hit for a movie that was an unexpected runaway success. Not only was the viewing public apparently starving for an Agatha Christie-style whodunnit, but they were raving about a classic Irish sweater as well. Jenny Eagen, the costume designer for Knives Out, stated in a New Yorker interview that she chose the off-white sweater because its pristine color reflected how little labor this wealthy character would have to do. Eagen’s choice of knitwear is intentionally ironic, considering the rustic background of the Aran sweater.
Originating on the Aran islands on the West coast of Ireland, the Aran sweater is traditionally hand-knit from a thick, off-white wool yarn known as báinín. The natural water resistance of the yarn, coupled with the air pockets trapped by the complex knitting pattern, resulted in a garment that was ideally suited for a location situated directly in the teeth of storms blowing in off the North Atlantic.
There is a lot of mythology centered around the Aran sweater, much of it propagated by the 1967 book The Sacred History of Knitting by Heinz Edgar Kiewe. Kiewe, a yarn shop owner, had noticed superficial similarities between the patterns of Aran sweaters and classic Celtic knotwork which originated in 7th Century Ireland. Kiewe went so far as to assign significance to each of the stitch patterns, with the implication that they were part of a lineage going back to the early medieval era.
In reality, the Aran sweater designs came about in the early 20th Century as a result of migration from the English Channel Islands and Scotland to Western Ireland in order to rejuvenate the industries there. These settlers brought with them the pattern of sweater known as the Guernsey, developed on the island of the same name and spread throughout the British Isles by sailors. The Guernsey is traditionally made of a relatively fine gauge of yarn and only has patterning across the chest and shoulders. In the Aran Islands, the Guernsey pattern was adapted with all-over patterns and knitted using the thicker báinín yarn that was available there.
Another legend exists surrounding the complex patterns of the Aran sweater. Supposedly, families would have unique design patterns which were passed down through the generations, meaning that a drowned sailor’s body could be identified long after death by the design of his sweater. While it’s not hard to imagine that a mother or wife who had spent long hours hand-knitting a sweater would recognize it, that would not be due to specific familial knitting patterns, and those patterns wouldn’t have been passed down generationally if the sweater design itself had only originated in the 20th century. The idea of a body being recognized by his knitwear may have been popularized by the 1904 play Riders to the Sea, in which a drowned Irish sailor is identified by his socks.
The Aran sweater gained international popularity after the Second World War, largely due to the efforts of Irish language and cultural activist Pádraig Augustine Ó Síocháin, who developed a local industry for manufacturing and exporting hand-knitted sweaters from the Aran Islands. Ó Siocháin also invested heavily in the local fishing industry and produced documentaries on the culture of the Aran Islands, leading to the sweaters becoming known as fisherman’s sweaters.
As a piece of rustic, traditional-looking clothing, they carried an air of authenticity which made them popular in both high fashion and casual wear. The popularity of Aran sweaters was also bolstered by their use by the popular Irish folk music group The Clancy Brothers, who are credited with promoting interest in Irish traditional culture in the 1950s and 60s. Performing on the Ed Sullivan show and for President Kennedy helped put the Clancy Brothers and their trademark Aran sweaters in the national limelight.
My advice would be to buy vintage. Traditional Arans in heavy báinín wool are tough enough to outlive their owners, and you can find beautiful chunky Arans for sale on ebay at wallet-friendly prices. After a brief search, I found one made of flecked cream-colored wool which can practically stand up by itself. If you’re looking for something more refined-looking, there are often hand-knitted or hand-loomed sweaters available in softer materials like merino and cashmere, like the famous one from Knives Out.
Eric Langlois is a writer, menswear professional, and history enthusiast based on the North Shore of Massachusetts.
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