rethinking "traditional" dress and the Hire impact

[OC Richard]

I suppose everyone's view of Highland Dress is conditioned by when they first started wearing it, or perhaps when they were first exposed to it.

Only recently, when I started looking at the timelines (as best I can tell) of changes in various aspects of civilian Highland Dress, did I fully realise that I came into kiltwearing at the very point it was undergoing significant change. It was the mid-1970s.

People who went further back, like Jock, had often spoken of the impact of the Hire Industry. But for me, only recently did several of the disparate pieces begin falling into place.

I've always held that "traditional" Highland Dress is a living thing, the current manifestation of things going back to unknown origins. If you go back in time and pluck out a particular period the discussion shifts to "historical" Highland Dress.

It becomes as circular as "art is what artists make", the defining of "traditional Highland Dress" as what the practitioners of traditional Highland Dress wear. Yet we can look at people like the Duke Of Rothesay, and many others, and observe that not every new thing which has come along in Highland Dress has found acceptance in certain quarters.

Looking at the timelines of various things, from what data I have (not having actually worn Highland Dress through the period like Jock and many others have) I was struck over and over by the coincidence of the timing of changes.

They seem to occur around the time that the Kilt Hire Industry began taking off, which I read is the early 1970s. (That corresponds to the boom in the Formal Wear Rental Industry in the USA.)

Until that time, from the 1920s to the 1960s, Highland Dress had remained remarkably stable.

What are these timelines? They involve the sort of minutiae that I seem to love.

I collect vintage Highland Dress catalogues and I also have hundreds of vintage photos. They tend to tell the same tale, it's what the average or ordinary Highland Dress wearer would have available and actually wore.

To take the matter of the styles of jackets worn in Evening Dress, the 20th century began with only two, the Doublet and the Argyll (or Evening Argyll, to differentiate it from the tweed Outdoor Argyll).

By 1914 an "entirely modern" style had appeared, the Coatee, or Prince Charlie Coatee.

By 1930 the Montrose had appeared, a shell jacket. New was the stand collar worn with jabot.

In the 1930s came the Kenmore, introduced by Andersons, which was merely a variation on the traditional Doublet.

And there things stayed. In the mid-to-late 1940s Battle Dress influenced Evening Dress jackets appeared but didn't last. Even a catalogue in 1978 only lists the Prince Charlie, the Doublet, the Montrose, and the Kenmore.

Next I'll look at sporran styles. By WWI small "round" (pocket shaped) leather sporrans, and animal mask sporrans, had become the norm for Day Dress (Outdoor Dress, Field Dress, Morning Dress). The leather sporrans are invariably brown and often mentioned as being buckskin or pigskin. But the long goathair sporrans of the Victorians persisted for Evening Dress.

By the 1930s new small "round" Evening sporrans, of sealskin with silver cantles, were replacing the long hair sporrans.

And there it stayed, all sporrans small and pocket-shaped, seal & silver for Evening, brown leather or brown animal mask for Day, up through the 1960s. I don't have a single catalogue that illustrates any other sort of sporran including a catalogue from 1978. However that 1978 catalogue does mention, in addition to 9 brown leather Day sporrans, 2 brown leather Hunting sporrans, and brown Rob Roy and animal mask sporrans, 2 sporrans available in black leather.

What about Day hose colours? All the catalogues from the 1930s through the 1950s speak of hose colours "to tone with the jacket". The colours seen are Lovat Blue, Lovat Green, and Fawn. These are the only colours listed in catalogues from the 1950s and 1960s.

Then, the 1978 catalogue lists, in addition to those colours, off-white, navy, and bottle green.

Another thing is Ghillie brogues. Today we associate them with Pipe Bands but photos from Highland Games from as late as through the 1960s show bands not wearing them. Band are either in military kit with spats, or in Evening Dress with tartan hose and buckled shoes.

The sum of all these things is a shift occurring in the 1970s, just when the Hire Industry was taking off.

Coming back to trying to define "what is Traditional Highland Dress" should we circle the waggons around the Highland Dress of the 1930 to 1970 period? And reject the innovations such as the Sheriffmuir doublet, and white hose, and black leather Day sporrans, and "semi dress" sporrans?

There's no way to know which of these things, a half-century from now, will have continued in use, or have been dropped and forgot, like the Battle Dress inspired Evening jackets of the 1940s.