Ubiquitous Sporran Anachronism

[OC Richard]

Over the weekend I attended a Comic-Con and there was a guy dressed in complete quasi-18th century garb, with great kilt, huge sword, etc. Without looking I knew what sort of sporran he would be wearing, and I was right: a modern one.

I just don't understand why nearly every person intending to dress in a historical period will get every portion of their outfit matching (more or less) the period in question but wear a modern sporran.

I've seen it over and over, hundreds of times. The examples I see all the time include:

-Renaissance

-18th century

-Dickens fair/Dickens ball

-Victorian fair/Victorian ball

-US Civil War ball

The background is, for those unaware, is that Highland Dress underwent a near-total transformation around the first years of the 20th century. A new suite of jacket styles and sporran styles appeared.

This stylistic break makes it jump out to the person aware of it whenever a person purportedly dressing in the costume of the period before the break wear items which are post-break, or to put it another way whenever a person is purportedly dressing in 16th, 17th, 18th, or 19th century costume but wearing 20th century items.

Not that sporrans are the only thing this ever happens with; there's a general notion that Highland Dress magically floats in its own reality, a reality divorced from the passage of time. For sure I've seen Prince Charlie coatees (a 20th century invention) worn with 18th century outfits, Victorian outfits, at Dickens Balls, at US Civil War Balls. But even when people get their jackets right, the 20th century sporrans remain, immune from the strictures of time.

I could post some photos to demonstrate what I'm talking about, but I don't want to show faces. My intention isn't to say that people are "bad" but to draw attention to the anachronistic sporrans. Re-enactors, generally, view such input as constructive.

Here's one I just found and cropped, a Dickens Ball or Victorian Ball. The men are wearing outfits that didn't exist until the early 20th century, their Prince Charlie coatees and 20th century sporrans.



Here's a 20th century sporran worn with 1860s military costume. (I think I did a pretty good job at photoshopping out the weapons.)