Kilted Morning Dress

[Tiran]

Now that I have time to spare, I'll have to take the waistcoat to a tailor and get it adjusted by taking a couple of inches off the bottom to lose the sixth button. And the sleeves of the shirt are too long. Brewin's black hose look OK, though, don't they?

Actually I don't think your shirt sleeves are to long, I think your jacket sleeves are a bit short. Using the standards of a suit, your jacket sleeve should just hit just past the wrist bone, to the top of the fleshy joint at the base of the thumb, with about half an inch of shirt showing. Most kilt stores seem to use a slightly longer sleeve in thier pictures with now shirt showing, but I think this is to accomidate that fact that rentals are never that custom fitted.

[Pour1Malt]

greet info-

ta very much David.


slainte mhath!

[An t-Ileach]

Actually I don't think your shirt sleeves are to long, I think your jacket sleeves are a bit short. Using the standards of a suit, your jacket sleeve should just hit just past the wrist bone, to the top of the fleshy joint at the base of the thumb, with about half an inch of shirt showing. Most kilt stores seem to use a slightly longer sleeve in thier pictures with now shirt showing, but I think this is to accomidate that fact that rentals are never that custom fitted.

I agree with you; but actually the coat sleeves have bunched up a bit in the photo - they actually are getting to be about half an inch shorter than you described (do one's arms get longer with age, I wonder?). The shirt is a cheapo, off-the peg number bought in a hurry from Peter Jones so it's likely to be that that's at fault. Enough about me, really.

James is correct that there wasn't a Highland Dress Morning Dress originally. I think Morning Dress originates in Victorian times, and was the sort of gear gentlemen wore in Town during the early part of the day - probably a bit like the smart suit and so on that one wears to an office meeting with the boss nowadays.

So, if Morning Dress originated in fashionable middle- and upper-class Victorian London, what would the Highland Gentleman have worn in an equivalent environment had Edinburgh been the capital of Scotland then (when he wasn't desperately trying to pass himself off as an Englishman, that is?)?

There seems to be a "rule" that yesterday's working dress ends up as today's smart gear (army "mess kit" was the "combat dress" of the Napoleonic Era; today's Number 1 Dress was the "patrol dress" of the Boer War period; and Number 2 Dress was what people wore in the mud of Flanders in World War I).

So, taking this as a rule-of-thumb, I've always dressed in Morning Dress according to what I think my great-grandfather would have worn. I don't think I've ever worn a grey or silver tie: I did have rather a smart greyish foulard with maroon paisley patterns once when I was much younger that I seem to remember wearing. I've mostly worn regimental, school, or club ties or cravats - we used to have one of those funny coloured Victorian photographs of my ggf wearing something similar. If the moths hadn't got at my trousers, I might have ducked the issue, chickened out, and gone with the familiar.

But they did - and made a merry meal of them, too. So, the kilt, the argyll coat and waistcoat, etc, were the only options. Anyway, as the kilt is rapidly (not fast enough for my liking) evolving into Scottish national dress, and Scotsman are insisting (rightly so) on wearing it in appropriate fashion for all occasions - like Sir Sean Connery and others wearing it to their Investiture at the Palace - I feel that we need to tease out some guidelines: which is why I started these two threads.

I think between us all we've probably got to some sort of answer.

[David Dalglish]

The outfit is great, But I dont like the bonnet, My personal taste