PIpe band returned to Balmoral bonnets

[OC Richard]

I went down the rabbithole of looking at old photos of Grade One bands in their competition dress in the 1960s through 1980s.

The surprising thing to me was seeing Edinburgh Police competing in full traditional civilian Day dress (tweed jackets etc) in 1969.

The caption said that they "broke the mould" by competing in "number two dress" which evidently was unheard-of at that time. (Of course the tweed Day jackets weren't No2 Dress in the military sense.)

I found a photo of Edinburgh Police wearing that tweed kit in 1966 but it wasn't in competition.

At top in this collage we see Edinburgh Police and Muirhead & Son both in 1969.

Muirhead's "No1 Dress" and Clan MacFarlane's civilian Evening Dress (complete with full tartan hose and buckled shoes) would have been how all the other bands looked then.

Next we see Triumph Street, CanAir, and City of Victoria in 1976, with the offwhite "Arran" hose and Ghillies being blended more or less with the last vestiges of civilian Evening Dress.

Bottom right is Denny & Dunipace in 1978, bottom left is Lothian & Borders said to have been taken between 1977 and 1981. Both photos show the new black Glengarry + black jacket + Arran hose + Ghillies outfit which was to sweep over the entire pipe band world in the 1980s.

That outfit has remained stable more or less, with pure white popcorn top hose replacing the offwhite Arran hose in the 1990s, and in turn being replaced by black hose in the 2010s. Jackets were jettisoned in favour of waistcoats around 2010.

Now in the 2020s black is nearly extinct being replaced by greys and blues (mostly) for both waistcoats and hose.