Bison hose in the 1860s

[OC Richard]

So on the way to a friend's wedding recently I stopped by our best local Highland Outfitter, RP Blandford & Son, and finally took the plunge and bought a pair of Cheviot "Bison" coloured hose.

My blue Cheviot hose have been my go-to hose for a couple years now, they're fantastic.

It dawned on me later just why the "Bison" colour looks so "right" to my eye: it's one of the very few colours in which selfcoloured Day hose appear in The Highlanders Of Scotland.

When I started kiltwearing in the 1970s all the retailers we had access to (which were mostly selling Lochcarron hose) sold the same limited range of colours

-cream/ecru/offwhite
-oatmeal
-Lovat green
-Lovat blue

I think that was pretty much it, from most retailers. Some also had bottle green, navy blue, black, and red.

This current range of offerings gives you the basic idea



Here in the 1955 Anderson catalogue the colour range is even more restricted, with "fawns Lovats and browns".



So it's interesting to look over The Highlanders Of Scotland and see that selfcoloured hose only appear in mid-grey, light grey, brown, and taupe. Tweed Day jackets also appear only in grey and brown.

Here



In contrast to the very narrow range of hose and jacket colours, THOS reveal a dazzling variety of jacket cuts, hat shapes, sporran designs, and shoe styles.

In our current Highland Dress you see the same cut of jacket over and over, the same hat shapes, the same shoes, but an unprecedented variety of hose colours.

In any case the current popularity of taupe/Bison and grey hose seems to be an unintentional revival of the mid-19th century situation.