Inverness Cape?

[jsrnephdoc]

The important thing to remember is that the cape is loose and flighty at the best of times, and a lightweight cloth (the usual tweed suitings or kiltings) are entirely unsuitable. The rain-cape version are intentially lightweight, but for different reasons.

My advice (and this comes from three decades of cape-wearing) is to get one in the heaviest weight cloth you can find - anything less than 28oz will be too light - even though the makers offer the option. Something like the Glenlyon 32oz (700gms) tweeds are, I would say, the minimum, but would give little in the way of warmth for one of your winters. A better option might be to have one made up in a Melton cloth, which is very warm.

If lined with an insulating quilting or similar, an Inverness cape would be ideal winter-wear for when going kilted, but make sure it is long enough to cover the bare-knee area between kilt and hose-tops - thus keeping out biting winter winds. My cape falls to about mid-calf height, and I would want it no shorter for this reason.

Also, having the bottom hem weighted slightly so as to keep the cape in close control, so to speak, in breezy conditions. In still, frosty weather the cape works wonderfully well - rather like a tea-cozy sitting snugly over a freshly-brewed pot.

Thanks SO much for all those details. Previously, I've made email contact with Mr. Antony (who make Band Capes but also tweed Inverness Capes, and with Kinloch Anderson, who sell goods to Royalty and whose prices confirm that). Neither seemed eager to create a cape in very heavyweight cloth, although the mill that K-A uses (in the Scottish Borders, I think, in or close to Selkirk) does weave some as heavy as 700 gms. My guess is that the shops that DO sell Capes are not eager to be wrestling with such heavy cloth. I've not found any source for quilted lining capes.

An American business wear overcoat (typically worn over a business suit) is made from wool woven into fabric more like a blanket than the tight weave in a PC or tweed jacket, or a kilt, for that matter. Perhaps the raison d'être for the garment in Scotland was the intemperate rainy weather rather than the bitter cold we often have in Montana, USA. Just last week we had temperatures of -20°F and snowfall of almost 2 meters, but today we'll have a clouds but high temperatures approaching 50°F! (and such dramatic shifts in temperature can occur in much shorter intervals, too.

Might you have any leads regarding someone who would/could make a lined heavyweight cape as you've described it?

By the way, I looked up Fettercairn and was reminded just how large a county Scotland actually is. Most of the web "hits" mention the distillery, which does tours. We TRIED to tour Glennlivet when last we were in Scotland, but were cursed by the tiny paved sheep paths we were forced to navigate in the huge SUV that the car hire company foisted on us in Edinburgh. We arrived an hour late (BEAUTIFUL countryside), missed our pre-paid tour entirely, but were able to enjoy a tasting (as the designated SUV pilot I saved my tiny bottles for another day).