Style, Fashion Rules, traditions, Flat caps, and the missing element...

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

We must remember a few things here.
When we view the "traditional" kilt, we fail to remember that what we see is what it became after proscription. Highlanders didn't wear pretty P.C. jackets with jabbots. They certainly didn't wear buckle brogues. We are viewing things through the filter of a revived (if not romanticized) style of dress that originated as the practical dress of the rough - and - tumble working man.

I'm afraid that the historical evidence just doesn't support such a sweeping generalization. There are literally hundreds of portraits of Highlanders dating from before the Act of Proscription in 1748. Admittedly these are of middle and upper class Scots, but what they show is a profusion of ornately dressed gentlemen. Viewed in chronological order one sees a steady changing in the style of kilt jackets and in the kilt itself.

There is a definite evolution of Highland dress if one compares the Michael Wright portrait of Lord Breadalbane (c.1660) with the portrait of "The Piper To The Laird of Grant" painted by Richard Waitt in1714. A scant thirty years later David Morier painted the famous "Episode of the Rebellion" a year after the battle of Culloden. As models he used regular British soldiers and Scottish prisoners being held in the Tower. Clearly seen again is the further evolution of Highland attire-- in the 80 years that separates young Lord Breadalbane from those furious Highlanders throwing themselves against the bayonets of a regiment of Grenadiers, the the jackets and kilts, diced hose, bonnets and sporrans have become "almost modern" by today's standards.

Come forward another 40 years to 1780 and David Allan's portrait of the Duke of Atholl out hunting with a servant shows the two men almost identically attired in clothing that would not look terribly out of place today.

Contrary to your thesis, we do see elaborate and well cut jackets, we do see see buckle shoes and, as the age of brush and palette give way to photography, we see the continual evolution of Highland attire right down to the present day.

To suggest that the kilt originated as the everyday dress of the "rough and tumble everyday working man" is to overlook the fact that it was, at one point in time, the everyday dress of every man, rough and tumble and highly refined alike. And depending on the circumstances of that man his clothes would have been simple or elaborate, as he could afford, and it is the same with clothes today.

If Bluejeans were outlawed, how would they be worn once the prohibition were lifted?

They would be worn by putting them on, one leg at a time. They might not look exactly the same, but then a pair of Levi Strauss denims made in 1850 are a world away from a pair of "engineered to fit" Levis from the year 2000. The bottom line is that the occasions when jeans would be worn might change, but the garment itself would not be radically different from that made in 1850.