Cuffs on traditional Highland jackets

[OC Richard]

There's a thread on the Contemporary forum discussing the various cuffs seen on traditional Highland jackets, and I thought my reply there might as well (or better) be its own little thread here.

I don't know if contemporary Highland Dress-wearers think of it in these terms, but the various cuffs are the modern descendants of 18th century cuff styles, found on both military and civilian jackets then, both Highland and non-Highland.

One style is usually called, when speaking of uniforms, a 'slash' cuff. It's the sort usually seen on Prince Charlies, but also on the US Marines' Dress Blues jacket, and many other uniforms over the last 300 years or so.

Going way back, early clothing recovered from peat bogs included this style of jacket with form-fitting sleeves which were buttoned all the way up



Coming forward to the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and up to the 17th century one would encounter jackets with sleeves too tight to fit the hand through (whether for warmness, or for fashion) and thus the sleeves had to be buttoned at the bottom



Move to the 18th century and it had evolved into an elaborate cuff, though still capable of being unbuttoned



and by the 19th century had shrunk somewhat, to this



and on 20th century Scottish jackets came to look like this



but is widely seen on non-Scottish uniforms too



The other style is usually called, when speaking of uniforms, a 'gauntlet' cuff.

It too was originally a functional cuff; in cold weather you could unbutton the cuff and lengthen the sleeve. Here is an 18th century jacket on which the sleeves are still fully functional



but in the 19th century had evolved, with Scottish jackets, to this



and by the 20th century looked like this, on civilian jackets



I find it interesting that with Highland jackets the back of the gauntlet cuff began to be made to come up to a point, a feature AFAIK not seen in non-Highland contexts, and on all fours with Highland spats. In non-Highland uniforms the cuffs stayed round, that is, straight across the back with no point, as in early German uniforms (don't get your dander up, this uniform is from before you-know-who came to power)



A current problem with Highland jackets is that various makers call their jackets with these two cuff styles (slash and gauntlet) various things, using the terms Argyll, Braemar, and Crail more or less randomly.