The origins of the Ghillie / Highlander Shirt

[Macman]

One was even velour, heaven help me.

You brought back a memory! My brother and I each had one of those; mine was chocolate brown, and his was dark blue. I think we called them Ponderosa shirts back in the 60's. I remember most guys having them in cordouroy, but no, we had to have velour.

[Ian.MacAllan]

Modern "ghillie" or "jacobite" shirts are to my perhaps undiscriminating eye very similar to the shirts worn by Colonial Williamsburg employees when representing 18th century colonial American laborers or artisans, some of whom surely were Scottish immigrants. I therefore consider them appropriate for wear with kilts in informal situations. I also believe that there is too little specific historical information about the details of the construction of the leine to rule out the possibility that the ghillie shirt is a descendant of the leine.

So I conclude that whether to wear such a shirt with a kilt is entirely a matter of taste.

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[davedove]

What we are calling the Jacobite shirt is just another variation of a shirt style that has been worn for hundreds of years in western culture. Details vary, like collar, buttons, etc. but the basic design is the same. Some people of that time would have probably worn a similar shirt, but to claim that it is the "historically accurate" Jacobite attire is oversimplifying.

[Carolina Kiltman]

If you want to get really picky, you must make it out of unbleached linen or cotton, hand spun and woven on a hand loom, and sewn entirely by hand, (no sewing machines allowed).

The gillie style shirt has been around a l-o-o-o-ng time, only the details have changed a bit. For warm weather wear when one wants to look more dressed up than in a T shirt, it looks quite good, in my eyes.

[Joe Gondek]

The shirt sold by Townsend is a good example, although I believe the collars were generally smaller, closer to a band type collar for the common man. A lot of reenactors make our own. It's a fairly simple procedure, the pattern is all rectangles.

This style shirt, made of all rectangles is the basic men's shirt pattern from the 1600's to the mid 1800's. The only major changes being the width of the collar and cuff. 1740-50's narrow band by the 1770's the collar is wider,big enough to fold down over the neck stock. Most have a single button at the neck or a single tie string.

My main complaint with the modern Jacobite shirt is the lace up front of which I can find no historical example.