USA Highland Dress 1978

[OC Richard]

I suppose we are all creatures of the time and place we grew up, and in kilt matters of the kiltwearing that existed at the time and place we began doing that.

As I've mentioned, when I began wearing Highland Dress it was the traditional sort because that's all there was. One couldn't choose a utility kilt or sport kilt or casual kilt because these had yet to be invented.

Here on the West Coast of the USA in the 1970s, unless you were lucky enough to live near a brick-and-mortar Highland Dress shop, the major source was The Scottish Shopper mail order catalogue.

My father ordered my first set of pipes from them in 1975. Then came my first Highland Dress items: a Balmoral bonnet, a plain leather sporran, kilt hose, and some tartan yardage from which my Grandmother made my first real-tartan kilt.

I wish I had that 1975 catalogue! It was like the Sears Wishbook to me. It was my introduction to Highland Dress: the page of kilt jackets, the page of sporrans, the page of sterling silver kilt pins, the pages of silver-mounted dirks and sgian dubhs.

A longtime piping friend came to the rescue yesterday by loaning me his 1978 catalogue.

So here it is, a snapshot of the Highland Dress that was available to us in the 1970s.



The only kilts they sold were kilts. It was understood that they were full-yardage handsewn Scottish-woven-fabric kilts, there being no other at that time.

All of the jackets and accessories were Scottish-made. This was before the Pakistani Highland Dress industry made inroads here (if indeed it existed then).

Here are the jackets





Note that the black Evening Argyll, nearly universal today, does not appear. The first time I saw one was when I saw Alasdair Fraser fiddling for a San Francisco RSCDS dance around 1980. By 1990 most Pipe Bands had switched to them.

Also absent is the Sherrifmuir Doublet. I have still yet to see that in any vintage catalogue.

Here are the sporrans shown. Note that the sporran styles and selection is nearly identical to those of the 1920s.

Still only brown Day Dress sporrans (here called Field Sporrans) are shown, though this catalogue does mention two styles which are available in black.





The most striking thing about this 1978 catalogue is how little the offerings differed from those being sold by firms in Scotland in the 1920s and 1930s.

For comparison here are some sporrans offered by Glasgow and Edinburgh shops in the 1930s





I don't know what the shops in Scotland were offering in the 1970s but as you can see we here in the USA were buying and wearing Highland Dress which had remained unchanged since the 1920s.

It goes to show the Punctuated Equilibrium of Highland Dress, which remained fairly stable (though with tremendous variety) from c1850 through c1900, then underwent a huge transformation, then again remained stable from c1920 through the 1970s.