Belt Buckle question

[OC Richard]

Is there a prohibited buckle allowed to be used with belts. Is there anything allowed or is it only specific types and styles allowed with a belt?

There are traditions and fashions surrounding Highland Dress which people can freely choose to follow or disregard. (Nothing is prohibited in a legal sense, in other words.)

The first thing to recognise is that when our Traditional Highland Dress evolved, around 1900 to 1920, the vast majority of men stopped wearing swords and dirks, and thus the belts that supported these weapons.

So in Victorian Evening Dress men generally wore a sword and crossbelt, and dirk and waistbelt, while in 20th century Evening Dress men generally wore neither the weapons nor their belts.

Here's a Victorian gent in full Evening Dress showing the weapons and their belts.



Modern Evening Dress, no weapons or belts.



In Day Dress, both Victorian and 20th century, men rarely wore weaponry nor their associated belts.



There is an entirely modern thing (which I believe is American in origin) of purchasing kilts that don't fit right and trying to hold them up with a dirk belt, in false analogy with trousers. Traditional kilts don't require braces or belts to hold them up.

Waistbelts did reappear in Evening Dress in the 1920s not to support a dirk (or a kilt) but purely as decoration when the new Montrose shell jacket appeared. From the get-go it was supposed to be worn with its special narrow Evening Dress belt, and lace jabot.



All that history aside, in Traditional Highland Dress, in Evening Dress, with specific jackets like the Montrose (and not with the Prince Charlie or Argyll), a 2.25 inch wide black leather belt with rectangular silver buckle is traditionally worn.

In Day Dress belts are sometimes worn on the kilt but only when a waistcoat isn't worn, though from time to time you do see a waistbelt worn OVER the waistcoat, for what reason I can't imagine, unless a dirk is being worn (which is quite unusual in Day Dress).

Day Dress belts traditionally can be black or brown and have a brass buckle, generally an open-frame buckle of some sort.

However many men don't have a dedicated "Day" belt and wear their Evening belt, with silver rectangular buckle, in Day Dress.