Origin and Use of "Dress" Tartans

[figheadair]

My understanding was that after PRoscription was repealed, in subsequent centuries all things Scottish became de rigeur, at least in part due to Sir Walter Scott. Cannot remember which queen, but one of them was supposedly making a tour of Scotland. Since red was a color rarely worn by proper women, becasue it was associated with prostitutes, and becasue many tartans had a base color of Red, dress tartans were devised by replacing most of the red in a tartan with white (a color of feminine purity) so the women could wear tartan and remain "proper" from a color dress standpoint. Not sure how true any of that is but that is the story I have heard.

jeff

Where on earth did the red = prostitutes come from? It certainly has no historical basis so far as tartan is concerned. There are some very fine portraits of highland ladies wearing red tartans - Flora MacDonald & Helen Murray of Ochtertyre are but two. Historically speaking red was an expensive colour to produce, most commonly from imported cochineal, and therefore not everyone could afford it irrespective of their gender. This may explain why in the C18th many of the chiefs, gentry etc are depicted in red based setts - they are making a soical statement.

Interestingly, whilst it has been claimed that dress setts are based on womens arisaid patterns no such garment survivies so far as I'm aware howver there are a number of domestic blanket patterns still extant and this may have been the source of the story/tradition.