What is a Doublet?

[OC Richard]

Questions come up fairly regularly on various threads involving this thing called a "doublet", in traditional Highland Dress.

Many people might say "oh, I know what a doublet is, it's the thing they wear in the Army" and they would be correct.

Here's the style of doublet worn by pipers in the Scottish regiments beginning in the 1840s and well into the 20th century:



Though nowadays people think of the doublet as an Army thing, the doublet is one of many elements of military Highland Dress that had a civilian origin. In the second half of the 19th century the doublet was by far the most common civilian Highland jacket. The growing popularity of the Prince Charlie Coatee after its introduction c1900 has seen the old civilian Doublet steadily decline, though it is still available from many Scottish (and Pakistani) makers.

The defining things that make a doublet a doublet are the skirts, which on most old doublets are functional pockets, perhaps making up for the lack of pockets in the kilt. I've heard them called skirts, flaps, and tashes, often with the addition of Inverness as in "Inverness skirts". I don't know what the Inverness connexion is. (Tashe is bag or pocket in German.)

I can't trace the evolution of the doublet very well, beyond noticing that such flaps were common in Renaissance jackets, and flaps akin to the Renaissance ones can be seen in some early Highland portraits.



However throughout most of the 18th century and for at least the first quarter of the 19th century the jackets seen in Highland Dress tended to follow Saxon/European fashions. It's as if the doublet lay dormant, for over a century, only to appear in some images of pipers in livery around the 1830s.

In the first half of the 19th century military piper's dress varied tremendously by battalion. Some pipers were put in ordinary soldier's uniform, some pipers were put in the reversed-colours uniform of the military band, and some pipers were put in civilian livery such as they would wear in the employ of the aristocracy.

Pipers in the latter category were often dressed in doublets, at a time when all ranks of the Army wore coatees. (Here the skirts' origin as pockets is very clear.)



Doublets took a firm, and permanent, foothold in the Army in the 1840s when The Cameron Highlanders dressed their pipers in dark green doublets, the first in the Army. (Green was the facing-colour of the Camerons, and musicians traditionally wore reversed colours.)

By the mid-19th century all Highland regimental pipers were in dark green doublets. Scarlet doublets were introduced for all ranks of the Highland regiments in 1855. (As you can see these were originally double-breasted and had slash cuffs, while the dark green piper's doublets retained the gauntlet cuffs.)



Here is the classic 1868-1914 soldier's doublet



Around 1980 all ranks of all the Highland regiments were put in dark green doublets, and when the Royal Regiment of Scotland was created the dark green doublet became the Number One Dress of the entire Scottish infantry.

Today, pipers and soldiers alike in the dark green doublets originally worn only by the pipers of the Camerons



What I don't know is why the doublet became so popular with civilians at around the same time it was beginning to be adopted in the Army (1840s). From c1850 to c1920 the doublet was by far the most popular civilian Highland evening and piper's jacket. Unlike in the Army where the doublet had a standardized cut, in the civilian world there was bewildering variation. The skirts were always there, and the gauntlet cuffs usually were present too, but there was endless variety in the jacket front, with various lapel, collar, and button arrangements.

Here is a typical civilian doublet c1860. It was the style to button only one button at or near the top and let the jacket front sweep open. Note how in this case the front edges of the jacket are in line with the front edges of the skirts; the jacket is cut to be worn as it is.



Here's a doublet designed to be worn buttoned



Here's an early doublet with very short lapels designed to be buttoned only at the top and swing open; interesting to see four buttons on each gauntlet cuff



This very interesting photo shows three distinct doublet styles L-R

1) civilian doublet edged in what the British call "lace" and Americans call "braid". This style became extremely popular around 1900.

2) plain civilian doublet in the most typical cut

3) military-style doublet, very popular with civilian Pipe Bands. This costume is nearly identical to that of military pipers, the doublets and accoutrements made by the same firms, making civilian and military pipers difficult to distinguish.

4) a slightly more home-grown version of the civilian military-style uniform (he wouldn't be mistaken for a military man)



Modern gents in Highland Evening dress: few are the men who still wear the doublet, in a roomful of Prince Charlie coatees