Tweed Kilt Jacket Colour Timeline

[OC Richard]

This topic has come up in a few threads, and I decided to look over the colour images, and texts referring to colours, that I happen to have to hand.

First, I read online that tweed jackets for outdoor sporting took off in the 1830s and 1840s. This fits with the overall emergence of Victorian Highland Dress.

By far the largest corpus of colour images of men in this form of dress is The Highlanders Of Scotland. The portraits were painted in the 1860s and are thus capturing Victorian civilian Highland Dress only a generation or two after it evolved.

Here's a sampling of what would be called Morning Dress in Edwardian times, and Day Dress, Outdoor Dress, or Field Dress by the 1920s.



Of the men in what appear to be tweed Day jackets, the colours appearing are 11 mid-to-light grey, 4 charcoal grey, 2 brown, and one each black, mid-blue, and navy blue.

Interesting that green doesn't appear. Also absent are check tweeds, which from photos of around the same period we know to have been not uncommon. (These particular photos are later, but I do have several photos of men in check tweed from the 1860s and 1870s.)



Now on to the early 20th century when colour books and catalogues become popular.

On the left is from a 1909 catalogue, centre and right are from the book The Scottish Tartans, published around 1919, however the illustrations clearly show the Highland Dress popular around 1900-1910.

Interesting that all the tweeds shown are check.



In an advert from the 1920s judging from the womens' hairstyles we see a lad in brown tweed



When we come to the 1920s and 1930s colour catalogues abound. Here are the tweeds shown in a couple Paisleys catalogues from the 1930s.



An Andersons catalogue from the period has no colour illustrations but does mention "Harris Tweed, Homespun, or other suitable tweeds" and states that "blues, Lovats, and browns are largely used." I think it's the earliest mention of Lovat tweed I have to hand.

My Rowans 1938 catalogue illustrates these tweeds, which it describes as "Scotch tweed" and "houndstooth Harris tweed".

It also mentions "tweeds and homespuns including those of Harris, Orkney, and Shetland".

One thing to note is that hose generally match the tweed jacket, something that some of the catalogues specifically recommend.



Now jumping to the 1950s an R W Forsyth catalogue states that jacket tweeds are "shades usually chosen from fawns, Lovats, blues, and browns to tone with the tartan". Note that "to tone with" doesn't mean "match" as evidenced by a brown jacket being worn with a blue/green based tartan. Note also that the brown jacket isn't "toned with" fawn hose as might be expected.



And we close out the 1950s with this image in a c1960 catalogue showing traditional Highland Dress continuing as it had been since the 1920s. Who could have known that in 20 years it would be challenged by the Kilt Hire industry and its numerous innovations and muddlings.

This catalogue (The Tartan Gift Shop, Edinburgh) offers "real Harris tweed in Lovat blue, Lovat green, and fawn".