Argyle Hose for daywear...

[OC Richard]

I was curious as to whether these are more typically thought of as for formal use only.

As always, I like to take the long view of things.

Our earliest images of Highland Dress always show diced or tartan hose. Offhand I can't recall seeing images of anyone wearing plain hose until the mid-19th century, so plain hose could be considered a Victorian innovation, I suppose... in other words, one could make the argument that plain hose are not traditional.

In the mid-19th century we have a wonderful snapshot of the current state of Highland Dress called The Highlanders of Scotland, a collection of 56 portraits of kilted gentlemen painted in the 1860s.

At that time there often wasn't a clear-cut dichotomy between "Evening Dress" and "Day Dress" as we would call it today. Long hair sporrans were worn in all sorts of dress (our modern small pocketlike sporrans had not yet evolved) and shoulder plaids were often worn with quite plain tweed jackets.

Nevertheless, it can be seen that the men wearing more elaborate dress, with waistbelt and crossbelt and plaid, nearly always wear tartan/diced hose.

The men wearing plain tweed jackets without any of those accessories are split down the middle, half wearing tartan/diced hose and half wearing plain hose. The plain hose are grey or taupe, with a couple pair in brown and reddish brown. Overall, of the 56 kilted men, only 11 are wearing plain hose.

Here is a quick overview of "Day Dress" in the 1860s.















However, by the 1920s new sporran styles had emerged (some based, as you can see, more or less on 18th century styles), and Highland Dress had sorted itself out into discrete categories, each with a dedicated sort of shoe, sporran, and jacket. It is this 20th century highly dichotomised Highland Dress which has come down to us as "traditional", and which helps form the attitudes of what "looks right" to many kiltwearers today.