Too Traditional?

[Peter Crowe]

Gentlemen,
I think that one could over-think the appropriateness of bonnet colours. For example a Mackie's fawn bonnet is very close in colour to the sand coloured beret of the Special Air Service Regiment. I would not think that any gentlemen wearing a fawn balmoral was trying to pass himself off as a former member of the SAS. I think Jock's point about the maroon balmoral is well made, in Britain (and most Commonwealth countries) that colour is very closely associated with elite airborne soldiers and has no other real association and would be considered 'poor form' to be worn by anyone who wasn't a former paratrooper. I believe that in the UK veterans are generally more understated about showing their former service, but I suspect that has more to do with a cultural reaction against both the high cost (human and economic) of the 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 wars.