old tartans were "simple and earthy"

[OC Richard]

I was wondering about the tartan Liam Neeson wears in the film Rob Roy.



The television series Outlander and the film Braveheart have cemented D C Dalgleish's "reproduction" colour scheme, which he devised in 1949, in the public mind as to what 18th century and earlier tartans looked like.

The tartan in the film Rob Roy takes us to a time before those shows appeared, and in light of that it's interesting to see what sort of tartan they used.

I found a New York Times article about the tartan which included:

Sandy Powell, the costume designer for "Rob Roy," decided to steer clear of controversy over the MacGregor tartan. She devised her own "setts," or ginghamlike checks. "It was very difficult to find an original tartan dating back to the period that the director liked the looks of," she said, referring to Michael Caton-Jones, "and it was easier to make one up so it wouldn't be wrong. In that day and age, tartans didn't exist as we know them. The tartans were earthy, and designs were simple."

The "earthy" notion conjures Dalgleish's "reproduction" range, while the "simple design" notion is on all fours with the Allen Brother's ideas. Both notions of course post-date the period of the film.

(As an aside the buckle Liam Neeson wore, coloured silver and worn back-to-front, is the same buckle worn by two characters in Game Of Thrones, The Mountain and Ser Barristan, the latter having been modified.)