Mixing tartans - yes or no?

[CMcG]

Too Much is Not Enough <snip>

...and there are times and places when you want every square inch you can drape or pin to your body. As somebody said nearby not too long ago, sometimes you have to Go Big or Go Home.

The trick, like so many other tricks, is to know when to do which... But if you aren't sure, you're probably better off with less.

At this point, I don't know when to go with maximum tartan but perhaps you can shed some light on this MacLowlife? This is an idea that I've been working on for the last while...

p.s. I hope you received my reply to your P.M. awhile back?

When you say "hose in another of the same clan's tartan", do you mean Argyll hose? If so, then I think the Argyll hose should be in the same colors as your kilt. That being said, most tartans are composed of multiple colors and there is considerable variation when designing a pair of custom Argyll hose, so it's really more of a style question (does it look right?) than a propriety question....

If you're looking to have one pair of hose to wear with several kilts, why not go for a nice two color dice<snip>

davidlpope's suggestion to match Argyle or diced hose to one's kilt is spot on. Am I wrong in thinking that actual tartan hose are fairly rare?

[Cygnus]

...
davidlpope's suggestion to match Argyle or diced hose to one's kilt is spot on. Am I wrong in thinking that actual tartan hose are fairly rare?

I think he was spot on about the Argyll hose (and I think he only mentioned Argyll hose as far as matching is concerned). As davidlpope implied, I think one has a bit more leeway with diced hose. I've seen the Black Watch tartan worn with red and white diced hose to good effect, and red and white don't match the Black Watch tartan at all.

I'd imagine part of the reason actual tartan hose are so rare is that they'd either have to be made from the same tartan as the kilt in the same way as a historic type of hose called cadadh, or be of a simple enough sett to be woven like modern hose.

I've actually been trying to find somebody that could replicate the actual set of my tartan in a pair of hose (the Macqueen tartan seems simple enough...), but I haven't had much luck yet. We'll see how it goes!

[MacLowlife]

When to wear it all?

1) Any really big investiture ceremony, coronation, etc.
2) a formal portrait (Charles Dance in WHITE MISCHIEF)
3) a Zoolander inspired tartan walk-off.


A bridegroom or father of the bride might as well pile it on- remember those pics of the McGregor and his bride?

I think, as we get older, some of us channel our competitive drives into the way we dress. Sometimes, we think to ourselves as we survey the dog's breakfast of options laid out by our valets, "Will there be people there who understand elegant simplicity, as embodied by a well tailored Regulation, or are these the kind of people who need to be hit over the head with a little red velvet?

_ . _


I know there are traditional arguments that will excuse any mashup of color so long as it can be blamed on the tartans all having the same clan designation (no matter how spurious the authority for that designation) while condemning some aestheticallly pleasing match because of a nineteenth century clerical whim. All i can say is that color knows no clan.

The generic tartan/argyle hose like National Scot would appear to have this principle in mind. If your tartan is red, blue, and green, for example, with three narrow white stripes, you may be able to find someone who will run you up a pair of hose with that tricky white triple raker, for a few hundred pounds, or you can buy a pair of hose that include the colors, like the National Scot. Technically speaking, they do not "match" and they are not Your tartan, but they look just fine- in fact, they look GOOD.

If you start browsing through tartan swatches, it is pretty easy to find several tartans using the same few colors, only spaced differently. Sometimes the differences are easy to spot- Royal Stewart and MacLeod of Harris, for example. Somebody else can list the trickier and more easily confused ones. I have no idea whether fighting men ever relied on their ability to distinguish these subtleties or stood around on the battlefield counting stripes. I would rather not.

As more and more people design and register tartans from the same finite palette of colors, there will be more and more complicated combinations.

In an ideal world, we would all wear one tartan, reflecting Universal Brotherhood, or we could choose to wear any tartan, reflecting our freedom. But in THIS world, the all wise and all seeing Kilt Police look into our closetsw and into our hearts and make sure that the Sobieski Stuarts didn't work all of those hours translating and transcribing for nothing. AREN'T YOU GLAD?