Options for smart but informal

[OC Richard]

If I were going with trousers I'd have worn a sport coat, shirt and possibly a tie, and dispensed with the tie at the first opportunity.

In my opinion the starting point is a high quality kilt and sporran. Once you have that you have a wide range of options that will look smart.

The kilt equivalent of the trousers-dress you mention would be kilt, leather "Day" sporran, plain hose, ordinary brogues/Oxfords, collared shirt, and tweed "Day" kilt jacket. This dress can be simple, comfortable, but very smart if all the items are high quality and fit correctly. You can dispense with the necktie and/or jacket if it gets too hot and still look fairly smart, especially if you wear a waistcoat.

This is just the cover of an old 1950s Highland Dress catalogue I have, but it shows Day Dress with the kilt quite nicely



About hose colour, as people here know my method is to avoid any of the kilt's major colours, and also, since I love colour, to avoid black, white, or grey. So with Cunningham, with vast expanses of red and black, I would avoid those two colours, and for Day Dress go with Lovat Blue or Lovat Green. For Evening Dress, if I didn't have matching tartan hose, I'd probably go with Royal Blue or even yellow.

EDIT: I had actually written "yellow or claret" and added the mention that a deep claret and bright scarlet can go very nicely together, though one wouldn't think so. But I thought that "clash" too much for people here and I edited it out.

But then I Googled "Cunningham kilt" and saw dozens of people wearing white hose and black hose with Cunningham kilts... snooze... but our own Alex came to the rescue, wearing the very claret I had been thinking of



(well actually I had been thinking of an even darker shade of claret, Maroon to be exact)