What is this bonnet/headgear called

[OC Richard]

I have to caution people that the military TOS or Tam O Shanter is a 20th century invention made in a completely different manner than traditional Scottish bonnets, and has nothing whatsoever to do with any Scottish bonnet, civilian or military, worn at any time prior to World War One.

Here's a newspaper article discussing its invention and introduction.



Traditional Scottish bonnets are knit and then shaped.

The military TOS introduced during World War One (seen in the newspaper article above) is made in an utterly different way, being made from flat woven cloth, the various pieces cut to a pattern (like a shirt etc) and sewn together. Thus it's an assemblage of flat pieces of cloth yardage with seams.

I know it can be confusing when people mix photos of traditional Scottish bonnets and TOS's, but note that they have quite different shapes.

The resemblance between a 20th century military TOS and the Outlander knit bonnets might be pure coincidence, or perhaps the Outlander costume people saw images of WWI TOS hats and imagined them to be traditional 18th century Highland bonnets.

It wouldn't be the first time Outlander costumes include 20th century things: the Outlander tartans are based on the "reproduction" colour-scheme invented by D C Dalgleish in the late 1940s.

Here's one of the Outlander tartans compared to MacKay in Dalgleish's "reproduction colours" (what Lochcarron calls "weathered colours"). Dalgleish invented this colour-scheme around 1948.