Matchy-Matchy or Contrast in highland attire? Psst... here is the secret

[OC Richard]

...a lovat blue jacket and waistcoat with lovat hose with one's solid color tie and flashes picking up a color from one's kilt.

Nowadays it would seem that there is a strong movement towards contrast. Patterned ties and shirts, hose that contrasts with colors of the kilt,etc.

Jamie

This seems to suggest that the tradition was about matching, and that contrast is a newfangled thing.

I don't know if that is accurate. I do know that myself, when I got into kiltwearing, was obsessed about matching things in spite of numerous examples around me of genuine Highlanders (present and past) and other Scots having a certain love of strong contrasts and sometimes shocking colour juxtapositions.

I remember seeing, back around 1980, somebody wearing a deep purple kilt with blazing scarlet hose and thinking it garish.

I remember seeing old guys wearing strongly patterned check tweed and plaid tweed jackets with their kilts and thinking it a bit much.

I studied Highland military dress and you couldn't get less matchy than that! A Black Watch kilt worn with red & white diced hose and a scarlet doublet with yellow facings etc.

So the "matching" thing was coming from my own false instincts, in spite of what I was seeing around me. It took me many years for the examples of the old guys to sink in, for their way of looking at things to become my way.

Here's the old look in the Army... which of us would think of putting a scarlet and yellow jacket with a Black Watch kilt, and with red& white hose?



Growing up I saw all sorts of things like this but didn't learn the lesson... note that the jacket, hose, and hat don't match (from the Anderson 1936 catalogue)



and guys like John Burgess... note the hose colours don't match the kilt's at all



and when I got into studying The Highlanders of Scotland... who today would put those hose with that kilt?



On the other hand, this contemporary photo still strikes me as garish



I'm trying, in my own dress, to avoid matching but at the same time co-ordinate somehow