Fly Plaid - When?!

[Tobus]

See? I didn't know it was just a "new trend" thing to have fly plaids... and I have fallen prey to the evil propaganda (pictures online) brought on by money loving companies trying make an extra sale.

Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that fly plaids are necessarily a new trend. They've been around for a while. Some can even be seen in the MacLeay portraits from the mid 1800s. But these were generally worn with doublets, as the PC style jacket didn't really exist at the time. And of course, all of the fly plaids seen in these portraits were worn along with dirk belts and baldrics in the military or martial style of the time. It also needs to be said that many people consider these portraits to be "play dress up" examples, and were not indicative of what Highlanders actually wore at the time.

Looking at OC Richard's examples of old Highland wear catalogs (like the Anderson catalog from 1936) shows that fly plaids were not even available at the time. Nor were they mentioned at all. I couldn't say exactly when fly plaids started popping up with PC jackets, but it would obviously have been some time after this. So it's fair to say that pairing a fly plaid with a PC is indeed a new trend, but fly plaids themselves aren't necessarily new. Which signifies that somewhere in the mid-20th century, someone decided to try mixing things for a pseudo-traditional look which became the ubiquitous trend we see today of PCs with fly plaids.

I don't know that I would blame vendors or hire shops for starting it (although it's certainly possible that they started it). At the very least, though, they have taken good advantage of the trend. But since their primary responsibility is to make money, not to staunchly defend Highland tradition, it doesn't make them evil.