Wonderful Play Dress-up Photo

[gary meakin]

The middle fellow is wearing two different tartans

[Spartan Tartan]

Ha! not only did I not notice those specific details, but Ibstill dont know what is meant by the left gentleman having his hose tops backward?

[OC Richard]

I still dont know what is meant by the left gentleman having his hose tops backward?

Tartan and diced hose and hosetops have a seam down the back. With full hose the seam has to be in the back, but with hosetops it's possible to put them on back-to-front like fellow #1 did there, with the seam showing in the middle of the front.

I thought I'd illustrate some of my points with other old photos.

As I mentioned, the photo above has men in military style doublets but having 1) civilian items mixed in or 2) having items from different regiments mixed or 3) having rank-and-file dress and pipers' dress mixed.

There's an internal consistency in photos of actual military men, for example



Everything worn is consistent with a piper of the Cameron Highlanders.

And here, everything worn is consistent with a private soldier of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. (Note the sporran and Glengarry, which also appear in the play dress-up photo in the OP.)



Note that in the two military photos above, the black dirk belt and crossbelt are worn with the dark pipers' doublet, while a white military belt is worn with the scarlet doublet. It's the mixing of pipers' and Other Ranks' dress which jumps out in the dress-up photo in the OP.

Likewise old photos of civilians wearing their own Highland Dress usually show internal consistency, all the items being ordinary civilian items with no military things mixed in.

Also, on average, photos of men accustomed to wearing Highland Dress and wearing their own clothes tend to have undramatic poses, the clothes fit well, and the dress is often somewhat understated



But even old photos of men in elaborate dress show internal consistency, with no military items mixed in, even when the man is former military, such as Lt Col William Campbell in 1865



But not always! Here's an interesting photo from 1860. Is he a civilian wearing a Cameron Highlanders sporran, or a Cameron Highlander in Mess Dress??



Now once in a while I'll come across strangely mixed dress, such as this Pipe Band from the 1960s or something. Quite odd to have Day tweed jackets but horsehair sporrans &c

[SlackerDrummer]

Now once in a while I'll come across strangely mixed dress, such as this Pipe Band from the 1960s or something. Quite odd to have Day tweed jackets but horsehair sporrans &c

If I were a betting man, which I'm not, I'd bet this was a band that also had a #1 dress uniform and change of uniform only applied to the torso and headgear.

[OC Richard]

If I were a betting man, which I'm not, I'd bet this was a band that also had a #1 dress uniform and change of uniform only applied to the torso and headgear.

Yes perhaps you're correct there. I would think that it would be fairly simple (and a lot more comfortable) to ditch the spats and hosetops and wear plain shoes and hose with the tweed jackets, at least.

I've seen the reverse of this "from the waist up one kit, from the waist down another kit" thing, a piper wearing a feather bonnet, military style doublet, full plaid, crossbelt and waistbelt, but wearing a plain leather Day sporran, plain hose, and ghillies. He was playing the teams onto the pitch at a major football match in England.

[RAF]

"Finally, did anyone notice that fellow #1 has his hosetops on backwards?"

I'm with Spartan Tartan.
How is that possible? Do you mean they're inside out? Or upside down?
Fascinating stuff, this. So many details!

[Chas]

You've got a good eye, Richard!

Regards

Chas

[creagdhubh]

You've got a good eye, Richard!

Regards

Chas

Yes, there's no denying that!

[Pleater]

Should the plaid on the little fellow in the middle be wrapped the other way, so the end goes across the chest and over the other one not under?

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[OC Richard]

Should the plaid on the little fellow in the middle be wrapped the other way, so the end goes across the chest and over the other one not under?

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

Maybe so... that didn't jump out to my eye the way all the other wacky stuff did. Those full plaids can be seen worn in a number of different ways in legitimate vintage photos, so there didn't seem to ever be a notion of any one "correct" way to wear them. In the Army different regiments had different ways of wearing them too, so you see a variety even in military photos.

Sometimes the plaids were folded in such a way so that a flat plain portion showed across the chest (this can be seen in the recently posted photo of the Duke of Atholl in the thread about The Atholl Highlanders, and in the vintage photo of the neatly dressed civilian I posted above).

In the 19th and early 20th century it was common for the plaid to be gathered/bunched across the chest (this can be seen in the photo of the Cameron Highlander piper I posted above).

Then in the Army they took to pleating it, I suppose to get a neater more uniform look. But still there was quite a variety of approaches concerning what to do with the shorter end, so that even recently you might see three military pipe bands using three different ways to deal with that end of the plaid (let it hang, tuck it under the front, twist it into a fat rope to create a quasi-shell, etc etc).