Help with sporran color

[OC Richard]

In "classic modern Highland Dress" (as worn in the first half of the 20th century), it was nearly universal to wear brown leather sporrans with black shoes in Outdoor Dress or Day Dress as we call it now.





I wore a kilt for some years before I ever saw brown ghillies or black Day sporrans.

Even in the military the plain leather sporrans were originally a dark brown, worn with black shoes.

[Ryan Ross]

I'm with Scott, 100%. And being that he's one of my favorite sporran makers and makes as fine a bag as can be had at any price, I trust his judgment on sporran matters without question:

A few thoughts:

1) 70GBP isn't at all expensive for a nice quality sporran. I just don't know if this is a particularly 'quality' piece. Looking at the image of the brown stamped piece, the lower left side of the flap appears to be cut improperly (odd angle to the 'swoop' on the arc).

2) DOUBLING the cost for any hand work tells you that it's all machine made before the cost 'bump'.

3) unless you're going to have multiple sporrans right away, you'd be better served getting ONE good quality black sporran.

4) as Chas said- when in doubt, look at the other items they carry. If everything else is cheap and plasticy, chances are good that they AREN'T all about quality.

If you investigate some of the ad partners here on X-Marks, you'll find better deals on similar pieces, with the piece of mind that comes from knowing WHO you are dealing with.

On the subject of color, when I wore the NYC tartan, I always thought a black sporran looked much better than brown.

[The Barry]

I would go with the black sporran, for a few reasons:

First, as stated above, the black looks better with the tartan in question.

Second, although the pictures above suggest otherwise, I always lean towards black instead of brown if I ever plan on wearing it at night. To me, brown is only really appropriate for during the day.

Finally, I like to match my leather. So unless you're going to wear a brown belt, I find that a matching set of leather accessories looks much cleaner. I realize that these last two points aren't necessarily historically perfect, but that's just me.

I once looked at getting a brown leather sporran for day-wear, but found that the clash between the brown leather and the black belt to be a bit distracting. And if I'm kilted up, I'm distracting enough!

Good luck in your decision making, and remember: no matter what sporran, belt, sgian, etc that you wear, wear it with confidence!