To answer that question, you need to go back quite a few years, says Mr de Blácam, after taking MR PORTER on a whistle-stop tour of the island’s considerable sights. In fact, he says, knitting has been a way of life on Inis Meáin since the late 19th century, when Ireland’s Congested Districts Board – set up to tackle poverty in the areas of overpopulation, caused by the great land clearances of the 17th and 18th centuries in the west of the country – brought in knitters from as far afield as Scotland and the Channel Islands to kick-start a small craft industry.

“It became a thing for the whole family,” says Mr de Blácam. “Not just the housewife knitting sweaters for her husband. All the women in each house learnt to knit from a very early age at their mother’s knee.”

Ms Ní Chonghaile, who grew up on the island, powerfully recalls what this meant for one’s personal wardrobe. “Everything was handmade,” she says. “The only thing you bought in Galway was material, if you wanted to make a dress or something. But it was all hand-sewn, and all the sweaters were hand-made, hand-knitted, to your size.”

Mr de Blácam himself first arrived on Inis Meáin in the late 1960s, while studying Celtic languages at Trinity College, Dublin. He came to learn Irish Gaelic, but immediately fell in love with the place, and more importantly, as he puts it, “the philosophy of the older people… their independence and their way of life.” He and Ms Ní Chonghaile, a native of Inis Meáin who had been working in Dublin, moved to the island shortly after. At that time, it was “a very difficult lifestyle”, he says. “There was no electricity, no running water. Everything was rowed ashore by currach [ a traditional type of boat ] .” Quickly observing that, without any trappings of a modern lifestyle, there was, “no chance that young people were going to stay and live here,” he and Ms Ní Chonghaile resolved to create a business that would provide satisfying employment for locals and reverse the tide of emigration. Neither of them had any expertise in the garment trade, but knitting, as Inis Meáin’s most developed industry beside farming and fishing, seemed a good place to start.

At that point, the knitting business on Inis Meáin was geared towards a certain thing: the so-called Aran knit sweater. “The women knitted a specific, highly decorated kind of sweater for little boys and girls for their First Communion and Confirmation,” says Mr De Blácam. “It was usually highly intricate [ with cabled designs ] , and angelic white wool.”

In the mid-20th century, merchants from overseas came to the island, demanding such pieces in luxury fabrics to be sold in the US, which meant that the style eventually made it into the wardrobes of Hollywood stars. “In the 1950s and 1960s, you had Steve McQueen and Marilyn Monroe sporting Aran sweaters in fast cars and in movies. The story of the Aran sweater became more important.”

At the same time, though, says Mr De Blácam, it became “stereotyped” – he wanted the new Inis Meáin knitwear to be more modern, more everyday wear as opposed to Sunday best. Working with local experts such as Ms Máirín Ni Dhomhnaill – an Inis Meáin knitter whose skills are so renowned as to have earned her a place on an Irish postage stamp in 1983 – Mr de Blácam began to identify design elements within the classic Aran Isles knitwear that he thought could be developed into more restrained and contemporary pieces. He became interested not just in the idiosyncratic stitches and patterns – which, according to the local lore, are said to bear the signature of each individual knitter – but also the practical knitted workwear that was worn by the island’s fishermen. These were pieces that incorporated panels and patches to help them withstand the rigours of life working on the ocean.

“Every season, we’d be moving this workwear story on a little bit,” says Mr De Blácam, explaining how he slowly incorporated new shapes and silhouettes into the Inis Meáin range, often taking inspiration from old, black-and-white photographs of local men standing on the seafront, or particularly special hand-knitted garments that had been handed down through local families. This ongoing strand of research has resulted in some pleasingly unusual garments, such as the so-called “Pub Jacket”, a blazer- like cardigan that seems particularly aptly named, or, more recently, a new, reimagined fisherman’s sweater with cashmere inserts at the neck and under the arms (for warmth) and lanolin-soaked knitted patches on the back for reinforcement.

Over the years, the brand has also experimented with colour, inspired partly by the demands of the brand’s international clients and partly by the shades of the island itself, where vast expanses of grey limestone rock are offset by lush grassy greens and shocks of vibrant wildflowers in pink and yellow. “I’m very careful about using colours that are drawn from the landscape,” says Mr De Blácam. “I would be careful using pastels – I don’t think you see too many pastels in the winter landscape in Inis Meáin. Colour here is a bit more vibrant.”

It’s clear that, since 1976, Inis Meáin has not only proven intrepid when it comes to design, but also in getting its products out there. Strolling through the stock room at the brand’s workshop, it’s striking that every box of colourful garments seems to be going to a different, far-off country, to a different achingly hip specialist boutique (yes, MR PORTER is pleased to be one of them).

Yet, though the brand ships far and wide and sources quality yarns from abroad (the traditional craft of spinning is one that, sadly, has not proven as resilient as knitting), all its products are still made from start to finish here, on the island. In the manufacturing space, young graduates from the Limerick College of Art and Design and interns from the University of Ulster work on high-tech Japanese knitting machines to produce intricately cabled knit panels from premium yarns, such as cashmere, silk and linen – the mixes provide tactile, liquid textures. On the other side of the room, expert hand-knitters who have been learning the craft since birth, manually link the panels together to seamlessly finish the garments, before applying additional patches and details as required. In an industry where, typically, a garment might be sent to a different factory for each stage of its creation, it’s a rare thing to see a product coming together from scratch in a single space.