Sporran Selection

[OC Richard]

Hello,
Looking for advice on Sporran selection for my upcoming wedding...wondering about the technical details that make a sporran formal or semi formal vs. casual.

To answer such questions I take the long view, keeping in mind the evolution of Highland Dress over the last couple centuries and how what's deemed "proper" or "traditional" today has come to be.

The short answer is that in the first quarter of the 20th century civilian Highland Dress underwent a near-total overhaul and the Highland Dress that had itself sorted out by the 1920s is still with us today.

That Highland dress sorted itself into two quite distinct categories: day/outdoor/field/morning dress and evening dress.

There's no "semi-formal" or "casual" categories per se.

And keep in mind that the two categories don't have 1:1 correspondence with any of the various "Saxon" (non-Highland) dress categories.

So traditionally weddings held during the day called for Day Dress, that is, tweed jacket (of any of the traditional tweed colours), brown leather sporran, self-coloured hose "to tone with" the jacket, and plain black shoes.



This is still with us, we've all seen over the last few years Royal events where the "Saxon" men are in Morning Dress and Scots are in Day Dress as seen above, and numerous photos of Scottish weddings.



Evening events called for Evening Dress, a jacket of fine cloth or velvet with silver buttons, white collar and black or white bow tie, or jabot, sealskin sporran with silver top, tartan hose, and black shoes with silver buckles.

Here's a modern Kilt Hire Era take on traditional Evening Dress, notice that only half the men are wearing the traditionally required tartan hose, and only one gent is wearing shoe buckles. The wearing of buckle-less Ghillies, and plain hose, in Evening Dress were two of the 1980s Kilt Hire innovations.



These discrete Day and Evening categories started getting muddled in the 1980s with the rise of the Kilt Hire Industry which saw men throughout Scotland hiring kilt outfits for their weddings.

A new mode of Kilt Hire dress was quickly cobbled together by mixing various bits of the traditional Day and Evening outfits.

So today men have a choice of sticking to traditional Highland Dress modes or going with the post-Kilt Hire "anything goes" approach.

I've been told that it's not proper to wear a belt with your kilt in a jacket and vest but I see photos of it being done.

Traditionally these belts were called Dirk Belts and were worn to support a dirk but not otherwise.

Unlike trousers, kilts weren't designed to be supported by belts.

At some point in modern times some kiltmakers started putting a couple loops on the back of the kilt intended to keep the sporran strap in place. Americans not accustomed to how kilts work saw these and thought "belt loops! Kilts are like trousers! I'll shove my dirk belt through them!"

In fairness it might not have been just my fellow Americans but also perhaps Scots not accustomed to kiltwearing who hired kilts and weren't exactly sure how to wear them.

About the term "vest" be aware that although "vest" and "waistcoat" were used interchangeably in Scotland through the first half of the 20th century more recently the meaning of "vest" in Scotland has been transferred to an undershirt.

So when speaking of Highland Dress it's best to use "waistcoat".