Late 17th century portrait showing Highland Dress

[Orvis]

Peter,

One of the things we as Jacobite reenactors do is to inform the public that today's rules regarding kilt wear didn't exist before Victorian times. I've seen other period pictures of Highlanders wearing both plaids and truibhs, so I believe it was common if one could afford that much clothing. Secondly, the length of the plaids hem above the knee varied greatly. In his "Letters from a Gentleman", Burt pointed out that Highlanders sometimes wore their plaids so high above the knee that their privates were barely covered, and if a Highlander was walking uphill of a viewer, nothing was concealed. In my old Highland Redcoat unit, when the temperatures went up, so did some guy's plaids, and they went down when it got cold. The same is true in my current Jacobite living history group - as much as 4-5 inches above the knee when it's hot. While this portrait of an actor may have been contrived by the artist, or just done for effect by the actor, the practice of "short kilting" was practiced before the '45.