John Magee opened a small drapers shop in Donegal in 1866, traveling to local markets to buy and sell hand-woven tweed from seasonal weavers rather than making the fabric himself. His cousin and apprentice, Robert Temple, bought the business in 1900 and began weaving Donegal tweed directly, and the Temple family has run it ever since, now in its fifth generation, with Lynn, Charlotte, Paddy and Rosy Temple currently at the helm. Fabric is still designed and woven at the company's mill in Donegal town, and 20th-century Irish designers Irene Gilbert and Sybil Connolly helped put Magee's tweed on the international map by using it in their own collections.