"Viking Style" Brouge lacing?

[OC Richard]

I did think that Scottish dress was a free form to an extent but then rigid rules...

Did anybody say anything about rules? I know I didn't.

Traditional Highland Dress is a fashion.

Fashions of any sort, punk or biker or office dress or any other, have a number of cultural functions, one of which is to announce to everyone who is a member of that particular "fashion culture" who is also a member, and who isn't.

I work at Disneyland and I see tens of thousands of the General Public every day, and while there's a general "I'm on vacation at Disneyland" fashion one also sees other fashion cultures, announcing where the people are from, what they do for a living, what their income level is, what their hobbies are, what sort of vehicles they get around in, what sort of music they listen to, and so forth.

(We're not blindly guessing, we chat with people and often find out about these things when they're brought up in the course of conversation.)

With Highland Dress as with any other sort of clothing there are ways things are customarily worn, usually stemming from the thing's purpose. If somebody was wearing gloves on their feet and shoes on their hands people might wonder "how can they not know that gloves go on the hands and shoes go on the feet?" You would take that knowledge for granted, wouldn't you?

In like manner in Highland Dress there are ways things are customarily worn, and if people accustomed to wearing Highland Dress see somebody wearing their kilt backwards, or the sporran slung around their neck, or the ghillie laces going all the way up their calves, or the flashes worn on the insides of their legs, they might wonder "how can they not know how to wear that?" They take the knowledge for granted because everyone in their circle of friends and acquaintances knows these things.

"Rules" have nothing to do with it. There's no rule that you must wear gloves on your hands! But you would take notice if you saw somebody walking through the snow with gloves shoved halfway on their feet, the rest bare. You would think "there are things make exactly for that purpose...shoes!" The issue isn't rules, but common sense.