Where to get a high quality Ghillie Shirt (100% cotton)

[OC Richard]

Lest we lay all the blame for "pirate shirts" and "chieftains vests" at the feet of Americans and Hollywood, we should acknowledge the Scots who embraced those very things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n24v5_sOx0Q

[OC Richard]

So the pipers/bands appearing in these album covers are:

Top left: civilian piper (possibly in a police pipe band, several of those dressed that way)

Top right: The Royal Scots

Bottom left and centre: The Scots Guards

Bottom right: The Kings Own Scottish Borderers

[jsrnephdoc]

So the pipers/bands appearing in these album covers are:

Top left: civilian piper (possibly in a police pipe band, several of those dressed that way)

Top right: The Royal Scots

Bottom left and centre: The Scots Guards

Bottom right: The Kings Own Scottish Borderers

Aren't there trademark or intellectual property statutes that require album covers to display correctly and identify the ensemble actually performing the music on the recording?

Recently, I went WAY down a rabbit hole (in the wrong direction) after watching the film that won the Oscar this year for "Best Documentary" (The Only Girl in the Orchestra, a fascinating short biography of the very first woman hired by the NY Philharmonic (not until 1966), learning, along the way, that symphonic orchestras in Europe AND the US embraced blatant gender discrimination for centuries when hiring musicians (the Vienna Philharmonic wouldn't even let women audition until the 1990s)!

I had just recently listened to Leonard Bernstein conducting the enormous Mahler 2nd Symphony in the UK (featured in Bradley Cooper's Bernstein film portrait). I read that the vocal chorus was the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and that the performance was in Ely Cathedral, then drew the stupid conclusion that I must have missed Ely in my 2023 visit to Scotland (it's actually a small town near Cambridge, England, with an absolutely stunning 1,000+ year old cathedral.

MY purpose was to count the number of women added to the orchestra in the years between 1966 (when Lenny hired that double bassist) and 1973, when that famous UK performance occured. However, given a choice between listening to the Mahler 2nd and doing pretty much ANYTHING else would favor Mahler, so I probably listened to and watched the entire music video from DG 2 or 3 times, counting only 2 women (both harpists​), before realizing that the ensemble was NOT the NY Phil, but the London Symphony! Of course, in my case the symphony orchestra was correctly identified on the album cover, but I had just ignored it!

And, I cannot imagine being told to wear some of the stuff you've been told to to perform at LA area weddings.

[OC Richard]

Aren't there trademark or intellectual property statutes that require album covers to display correctly and identify the ensemble actually performing the music on the recording?

I don't know anything about UK law. It was quite common, in the days of records and CDs, for companies that specialised in low-cost albums to use random photos for their covers.

About female orchestral musicians, as we've seen the violin sections nowadays are often at least half female, and flutes mostly female.

I know a couple LA area professional "sax guys" who are female, but there's a built-in prejudice, even if the women really good, which these are. (A "sax guy" generally plays sax, flute, clarinet, and even oboe, and oftentimes pennywhistle, bamboo flutes, panpipes, etc.)

Percussion and Brass are perhaps the most persistent male bastions in Orchestras. I play every year for the She Can Play Brass concert which raises scholarship money for promising young female Brass players. (I've tried to talk them into using one of our local superb female pipers, who know all about fighting gender bias, but they seem to like me.)

[Allan Thomson]

Many years ago when the Ghillie/Jacobite shirt was a relatively new fashion based on a notionally historical concept I was bought one along with a slashed Doublet. The Slashed Doublet style seems to have vanished to be replaced by the Chieftain/Swordsman vest. It did make me think should I chose to wear the style again how to make it seem a little more 'authentic' masking the worst bits of the style. I was thinking additional buttons on the front of the jacket (only two were supplied) to allow it to be buttoned higher and a cravat to mask the tie bit of the shirt, probably evolve the cuffs into the gauntlet style of the Argyle might produce something more akin to the previously depicted portraits.

I'm tempted to bring it to my local kiltmaker to see what she could do...of course finding an occasion to wear it for might be challenging- probably a childhood, and I guess a plaid worn like a belted plaid to compliment a phillabeg would be a good move...

[OC Richard]

For sure our earliest full-length painted-from-life professional oil portaits show the slashed doublet.

I'm hazy on Continental fashion, but I think that slashed doublets would have been quite old-fashioned in France, England, etc by 1700 but still in fashion with Highland Dress.

It's two of these portraits that give us our earliest clear views of sporrans.

[jsrnephdoc]

Lest we lay all the blame for "pirate shirts" and "chieftains vests" at the feet of Americans and Hollywood, we should acknowledge the Scots who embraced those very things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n24v5_sOx0Q

And, the AUDIENCE for that performance. They all look like "Amurican" senior citizen tourists just SO grateful to get off that bus!!!

[Jock Scot]

Lest we lay all the blame for "pirate shirts" and "chieftains vests" at the feet of Americans and Hollywood, we should acknowledge the Scots who embraced those very things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n24v5_sOx0Q

I and others have said more than once on this website over the years that the disdain that many traditional Scots held and still hold, these entertainers' comical and embarrassing theatrical outfits had too be seen and heard, to be believed. Mentioning names will not be helpful, but the harm done by these wayward kilt attire samples are still haunting the international kilt attire scene, seen today.

Those awful pictures should come with a kilt attire "health warning" at every opportunity.