Buckles or Laces?

[McCracken140]

I think we are at risk of confusing ‘traditional’ with ‘customary’. A good example is what was mentioned earlier re hose and brogues in black tie

Tartan hose and bucklers are ‘traditional’. This had been the practice for formal evening wear for well over 100 years.

Solid coloured hose, in a dark colour or in a colour of the wearer’s kilt, worn with ghillies or polished day brogues, is the most common standard in the modern day. This is, currently, ‘customary’.
It has been accepted for long enough that it seems relatively immune to the changing winds of fashion, yet it has not been established for multiple generations, so personally I don’t believe it (yet) constitutes a ‘tradition of dress’.

Indeed the hose ‘fashion cycle’ evidently can be relatively short lived as shown by the examples of the G1 pipe bands.

Regarding the ‘tradition’ of white hose for weddings and black for funerals— I have really no clue about this, but from I have read in this thread, I would bet that it was a definitive custom at one point in some areas of Scotland. However, if it were a long-standing tradition we would have heard about it by now.

[McCracken140]

As it were, I think the best policy is a tasteful combination of our traditions, the current customs, and a little bit of the trends, in that order. If you were to go “Full Send” with a traditional evening outfit, like our icon PM John D Burgess, you would look great— but you’d stick out like a sore thumb, to the point of being perhaps even ostentatious.
If you went all the way with the current custom, you would blend in to the uniform crowd of black PCs, navy blue hose, and white sealskin sporrans.
If you only wore the fresh trends you’d look like you came out the wrong end of a hire shop.

The best policy is a combination of all three factors. This reminds me of something I read, along the lines of “Living in the present, with strong roots in the past, looking towards the future.”

What would Highland Dress be without it’s history? Yet we don’t want to look like a bunch of MacLeay brigadoons. And what kind of society has “fashion conscious” folks like us who don’t indulge in a little bit of changing styles?

//End Speech lol

[Me cousin Jack]

More and more I’m liking not only the look of this type open shoe, but the additional cooling I’m invisioning it provides.