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13th October 22, 10:42 PM
#1
Thank you all very much for your feedback.
I'm going to put together a few options this weekend and take some photos, then ask for a bit more feedback. I still have a long time to plan. :-)
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14th October 22, 05:47 AM
#2
It's a topic with a number of different compartments.
First is to recognise that civilian Highland Dress has various periods, each consisting of several decades of stability followed by a short period of rapid change. We're in the middle of one of the latter as we speak, so somebody getting their introduction to Highland Dress at this point in time is presented with a quite messy picture.
I'll call the Highland Dress of c1840 to c1900 Victorian Civilian Highland Dress for lack of a better term.
In this period long hair sporrans were worn in both informal outdoor/day dress with tweed and in formal evening dress.
Though VCHD tended to have a looser demarcation between day and evening, one does note that the day/outdoor/tweed sporrans tend to be of brown-grey hair with plain leather cantles, often with no metal, while the evening/formal sporrans were usually white hair with silver cantles.
Also popular in VCHD day/tweed outfits were Pine Marten sporrans.
So yes in Victorian times hair sporrans were worn with tweed but no these were generally not "formal" sporrans as these two sorts of sporrans existed then.
Then between around WWI VCHD was rather rapidly replaced by the Traditional Civilian Highland Dress which is still with us today.
Around WWI two new sporran genres appeared, both small and rounded:
Day Dress (outdoor/tweed): brown leather, often with fur fronts
Evening Dress: seal with silver cantles. However the long hair Victorian evening sporrans, though not as common, have continued to be worn to this day.
So yes throughout the TCHD period (roughly 1920 to the present) some men, especially pipers, have worn the modern 20th century small rounded seal & silver evening dress sporrans with day tweed, though this has never been considered proper, strictly speaking, due to day dress having its own dedicated sporran genre.
Nowadays who can say! TCHD has been battered (but not yet defeated) by the appearance and rise of Kilt Hire Highland Dress which started to have an impact starting in the 1980s and whose impact seems to steadily grow.
KHHD introduced the ubiquitous costume consisting of the black Prince Charlie coatee, black leather "semi dress" sporran with silver fitments, pure white hose, and high-laced black Ghillie brogues, everything designed to be less expensive and in black and white to easier to hire together.
KHHD has also been keen on pairing evening dress seal & silver sporrans with tweed.
Time for pictures!
Victorian day dress, tweed with brown-grey long hair sporran with plain leather cantle, a far cry from Victorian formal sporrans.

The coming of the new small brown leather "day" sporran, 1910

The fully developed post-WWI traditional Day Dress with brown leather sporran

Selection of Day Dress sporrans in a 1938 catalogue

TCHD continues: 1960

The impact of Kilt Hire 1980s to present: some monochromatic hire outfits, semi-dress sporrans, black day sporrans, greyscale tartans, etc
Last edited by OC Richard; 14th October 22 at 06:06 AM.
Proud Mountaineer from the Highlands of West Virginia; son of the Revolution and Civil War; first Europeans on the Guyandotte
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15th October 22, 06:43 AM
#3
All that background blathering aside, men have worn Evening Dress seal sporrans with tweed going back to when our modern small seal Evening sporrans first appeared, and still do today.
I put together this group showing around a century of men doing this.
On the left is perhaps the earliest photo I've found of the type of sporran that became the standard TCHD Evening Dress sporran (except for the fur which doesn't look like seal). At that time such a sporran might seem out of place with Evening Dress, in which white long hair silver-topped sporrans were standard.
On the right are two modern Stewards at the Oban Games.
Last edited by OC Richard; 18th October 22 at 04:58 AM.
Proud Mountaineer from the Highlands of West Virginia; son of the Revolution and Civil War; first Europeans on the Guyandotte
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15th October 22, 08:26 AM
#4
 Originally Posted by OC Richard
On the right are two modern Clan Chiefs at the Oban Games.

Really?
Alan
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15th October 22, 09:25 AM
#5
 Originally Posted by neloon
Really?
Presumably Nicholson and Anderson?
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15th October 22, 11:46 AM
#6
 Originally Posted by figheadair
Presumably Nicholson and Anderson?
But there is no chief of Clan Anderson 
Alan
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17th October 22, 01:34 PM
#7
Ok folks, forgive me on three accounts here:
- The lighting isn't as dramatic as some folks are able to pull off
- I clearly need to press my kilts.
- I forgot to include hose.
That said, here are the two "mood boards," as promised.
HdB6q1I.jpg
L4cm5As.jpg
IdOgwHp.jpg
UeSrS7N.jpg
The wedding will be really casual (this is California, after all), but we'll have a nice dinner + dancing outdoors beside an alpine lake on Saturday (afternoon stretching into evening) and I'd like to wear a kilt.
I'm learning towards the outfit on the right, with the:
- Green overcheck tweed
- Fraser Red Ancient Kilt
- Chocolate-Bronze cantled Musquatch sporran
- Red necktie
- Likely some love green hose with red flashes or garters
Last edited by KennethSime; 17th October 22 at 01:37 PM.
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18th October 22, 04:57 AM
#8
 Originally Posted by neloon
Really?
Alan
Sorry if the attribution is incorrect, that photo was labelled "Clan Chiefs at Oban".
Likely they're Stewards?
I just now changed my post.
BTW here's the original photo from which I cropped the two gents wearing seal Evening sporrans with their Lovat tweed jackets.

and another photo seemingly taken the say day
Last edited by OC Richard; 19th October 22 at 05:20 AM.
Proud Mountaineer from the Highlands of West Virginia; son of the Revolution and Civil War; first Europeans on the Guyandotte
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18th October 22, 07:45 AM
#9
Richard,
The gentleman in the third photograph is the famous Angus Macpherson as I expect you know.
https://electricscotland.com/history...back/index.htm
Alan
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18th October 22, 08:37 AM
#10
And just to show how everything's connected, here's a schoolfriend of mine competing at Braemar in the early '60s with Angus judging
Alan
John MacRae Braemar c.64 maybe Angus MacPherson on rt..jpg
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