matching your hose?

[OC Richard]

Okay, everybody has given good advice so far, but no one has mentioned that the cream/white hose really should be avoided (this being the "Traditional Highland Dress Forum" I feel I am on safe ground when I write this!). Diced hose, or tartan hose are the socks of choice for evening dress. Failing that--and they do tend to be a bit expensive-- go with solid colour hose: blues, greens, reds, greys are all good choices and will mark your man as having a discerning eye!

I put the "discerning eye" bit in bold because that, to me, is the crux of the issue.

Cream/offwhite hose aren't "wrong" but they ARE out of fashion currently.

We should keep in mind that Highland dress, like any sort of clothing, is a fashion and at any given time some things are "in" and some are "out".

Fashion is a funny thing: it advertises to those who are "in the loop" who are likewise in the loop, and those who are not.

At any point in time the majority of people will wear what's current, while a few will be on the cutting edge of the next trend, and a few will continue to wear what is out-of-date... a bell-shaped curve if you will.

This is a constant topic of debate in the Pipe Band world.

Anyhow, nowadays in the Pipe Band world at least, offwhite hose mark a band as being hopelessly out of date, because they were all the go in the 1980's but in the 1990's were replaced by pure white hose.

Currently, while many leading pipe bands still wear their 1990's pure white hose, many are going to dark hose, the most popular colours being black and an extremely dark blue. (Black goes with everything, so it's a no-brainer for pipe bands.)
Charcoal grey is also somewhat popular now, and compliments a wide variety of tartans.
Also Lovat blue and Lovat green hose, considered old-fashioned in the 1980's and 1990's, have been making a comeback.

The rallying cry seems to be "anything but white!" or "death to white popcorn hose!"

(Offwhite is considered completely beyond the pale and never even enters the conversation).