Top quality British regimental kilt

[OC Richard]

As part of the amalgamation work there was a series of meeting to 'agree' which elements of the six antecedent regiments' uniform would be carried over, in one level of dress or other, to the RRS. At the time I worked for the Brigadier who was responsible for the trying to find consensus. There was a lot of blood on the carpet and this was said to have been the most difficult element of the amalgamation as each regiment tried to preserve as much of its history as possible.

I would have loved to have been the fly on the wall at these meetings! Or perhaps not...

It must have been an extremely difficult and touchy thing, with hundreds of years of tradition on the bargaining table.

In the amalgamations of the kilted Highland regiments the MOD did an admirable job, first with the QOH, then with The Highlanders, of preserving as much as possible.

But coming up with a single uniform that contains elements of all the traditional Scottish infantry regiments, Highland and Lowland, is an impossible task.

I would have thought they would let precedence win out, and gone with some sort of blend of the uniforms of The Royal Scots and The Black Watch, being the oldest Lowland and Highland regiments.

To phrase it another way, if you're going to reduce the army to a single Highland uniform, the obvious choice would appear to be the army's original Highland uniform (when it had only a single Highland regiment, The Black Watch).

Not 18th century costume of course, but the modern expression/evolution of the original uniform.

The making of it (the RRS uniform) is another story which saw the MOD going to the best cost, as opposed to the best material.

Yes one can see where corners were cut.