"Viking Style" Brouge lacing?

[OC Richard]

I cannot for the life of me get the hang of these more artistic terminologies such as "bison", " teal" and so on.

Happily "teal" and "taupe" aren't vague fashion labels but creatures, the colours of which can plainly be seen.

Taupe, above, in English a mole, whose coat is midway between grey and brown.

Teal, below, is a bird, the colour-name "teal" coming from that small bit of greenish-bluish feathers.



The hose that Cheviot calls "bison" would be called "taupe" by many Americans. Here are mine:



As to the bison, they're sort of tri-coloured, so you have options.

[OC Richard]

About the comings and goings of hose colour fashion, in Victorian times we only have one large colour sample, The Highlanders Of Scotland, in which we can see over 50 pairs of hose

30 diced
13 tartan
5 taupe
5 mid-grey
1 charcoal grey.

In The Kilt (1914) it is stated that Morning Dress hose should not be tartan.

My catalogues from the 1930s state, concerning the hose worn with Outdoor/Morning/Field/Day Dress:

"self-coloured to match the tweed jacket and vest" (sic)

"plain stockings in a shade to tone with the jacket"

These catalogues don't list the hose colours offered, but a 1950s catalogue offers Lovat blue, Lovat green, and Fawn. I have colour photos from that time showing men at Highland Games wearing these very colours with matching tweed jackets.

Catalogues from the 1970s are offering ecru, navy, bottle green, fawn, Lovat blue, and Lovat green. A catalogue from 2009 offers these exact colours.

With Pipe Bands, they nearly all wore tartan or diced hose up until the 1970s when most went with "natural" Aran hose or ecru/cream ordinary kilt hose.

With the 1990s came the pure white "popcorn top" hose, and more recently black, charcoal, and navy have taken hold.

[Jock Scot]

O.C.R.

Having shot rather more than a few teal during many shooting seasons, I am well aware what a cock(male) teal looks like. Unfortunately, that wonderful bird, has many colours to chose from, how is a non artistic eye to tell which colour to choose ? In passing, teal are also splendid to eat.

I have trapped many hundreds, thousands probably, of moles during a long agricultural career in various parts of the UK, British moles seem to me more black with a wee tint of grey. Does that accurately describe taupe?

By the way, I have never heard of a mole called a "taupe". Maybe they are called "taupe" in parts of Britain, but not in the parts of Britain that I frequent.

Bison described as a colour I actually understand as brown, but why not just call it brown?

[Ivor]

Taupe is the French word for that creature you have been trapping all these years, Jock. I would agree with you that its colour is a very dark grey, verging on black that I recall from my days tying flies with the fur. Perhaps these names for different colours is just a way of romanticising what is actually just a rather dull and boring shade. I mean who would actually choose to wear brown when bison has a certain cachet about it? But of course if you really want to stand out there are more vibrant shades - like white🫢

[Jock Scot]

Taupe is the French word for that creature you have been trapping all these years, Jock. I would agree with you that its colour is a very dark grey, verging on black that I recall from my days tying flies with the fur. Perhaps these names for different colours is just a way of romanticising what is actually just a rather dull and boring shade. I mean who would actually choose to wear brown when bison has a certain cachet about it? But of course if you really want to stand out there are more vibrant shades - like white��

Well done Ivor!

You beat me to it. According to some French friends that I happened to be speaking to just, they confirm that "taupe" or more accurately, "la taupe" is the French word for a mole.

[OC Richard]

You got me to looking up mole photos and I see that there are various species with differing fur colours, some North American species having a lighter coat than your British moles.

Darker or lighter, the colour does tend to be more or less halfway between brown and grey.

In ordinary US usage "taupe" generally refers to this midway colour, a colour which here in the US can't properly be called either "brown" or "grey".

An interesting thing is the way that different languages and dialects often draw the line between colour-names in different places along the spectrum.

I have seen, many times, UK clothing sellers using the word "brown" to describe tweed which generally in the US would be considered halfway between brown and grey. Americans would call the same tweed "taupe" (if familiar with that word) or "gray" or perhaps "brownish gray" or "gray-brown". More artistic types might call the same tweed a "warm gray".

[Father Bill]

An interesting thing is the way that different languages and dialects often draw the line between colour-names in different places along the spectrum.

And for heaven's sake, don't get us started on "khaki" (he said grinning mischievously and rolling his eyes heavenward).

[Tobus]

Bison described as a colour I actually understand as brown, but why not just call it brown?

When a supplier sells kilt hose in multiple shades of brown, they need some way for customers to differentiate them. The most logical way would be to use names that people can associate with what they see in nature, or common items they see in their everyday lives which help them envision that colour. This is commonly done with all colours. For example, nobody complains about the use of the colour "mustard". Why not just call it yellow? Well, because it's an apt descriptor that implies a deeper tone of yellow than other lighter yellow shades. Or the colour "salmon" being used to describe a deeper orange-pink hue. "Charcoal" is a very accurate descriptor of a dark grey that simply can't be captured by calling it dark grey.

[Jock Scot]

Tobus.

That sounds all terribly sensible to those that these details matter.

For me? When I am in a tweed shop, for example, if I like a pattern, or colour, or combinations of colours, then I might take an interest, the same goes for hose. If not, I just dismiss them/it. This idea of colour descriptions, just seems more detailed than I find necessary. Others, I quite accept, take all this colour business rather more seriously than I can bother with. What I do know, is that some colours go better with some colours and some don't, if they do they do, if they don't they don't, I move on, without thought.

Each to their own.

[Ivor]

Tobus.

That sounds all terribly sensible to those that these details matter.

For me? When I am in a tweed shop, for example, if I like a pattern, or colour, or combinations of colours, then I might take an interest, the same goes for hose. If not, I just dismiss them/it.

Each to their own.

Perhaps it is a symptom of the times when so many now shop online, particularly following the covid pandemic, but for us of an older generation it is more important to actually see and feel the quality of goods on offer. OK you can return items if you don’t like them but you are then left without a sourced item. Simply going by a colour chart is not always a reliable indicator, particularly of quality.