Which Color Goes Best

[OC Richard]

I tend to take the long view of things, including Highland Dress.

The long view is that leather "Day dress" sporrans, when they appeared around 1900, were brown.

Then in the 1970s the Kilt Hire Industry started taking off.

The hire outfits were based around black Evening jackets, but the accessories traditionally associated with those jackets such as seal Evening sporrans, tartan hose, and buckled shoes were reckoned too dear.

So a hybrid Hire outfit was created consisting of black Evening jacket, plain Day hose (but now white rather than the traditional Lovats and fawns), black Ghillies, and a new style of sporran dubbed "semi dress".

This was a leather Day sporran but done up in black, and often with the addition of chrome elements borrowed from Evening sporrans.

On the left is the Evening Dress that appeared after World War One, and is still to be seen today.

On the right is the new Hire type outfit.



This new sort of outfit never caught on with the traditional types including myself.

So for me a Hunting sporran, or indeed any leather Day sporran, only feels right in brown.

Here's me wearing a Margaret Morrison Hunting sporran in dark brown.