Is "Brigadoonery" ever appropriate?

[OC Richard]

I've been hired to pipe at quite a few productions of Brigadoon over the years; it's a cool gig for a piper: you play a couple tunes and get to hang out with all the beautiful dancers!

The play was written in the immediate post-WWII era and is rather dated. The costumes and the 'Scottish dancing' are absurd. Yet it's a perennial favourite with schools and communities because of the catchy music, colourful costumes, and charming love story.

The big hit from the musical was Almost Like Being In Love which became something of a jazz standard, covered by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, and Frank Sinatra

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whLNHRclnDc

The usual costumes seen in productions of Brigadoon are a ridiculous mix of quasi-18th century stuff and High Victorian stuff. I'd love to see Brigadoon done with authentic 18th century costumes.

You haven't lived till you've seen a production of Brigadoon having an entire cast of 300-pound Samoans complete with fake Scottish accents (the singing was brilliant however).

About these swordsmen/chieftan/piotan vest things, the only purpose they seem to serve is Brigadoonery. As has been pointed out, they're not historical and thus don't fit in with a Ren Faire type event, or re-enacting of any sort.

They seem to feed into a fairly common American attitude which views Highland Dress as costume rather than clothing, as historical rather than contemporary. It's very common for Americans to regard Highland Dress as somehow divorced from the space-time continuum, and you'll see Culloden and Victorian and modern things worn together willy-nilly.

However I used to have one of those vests! It was back in the 1980s and I was piping for a wide variety of events and I thought it would look cool for Ren events. The fact that it wasn't historical didn't trouble me at all.

Here I am piping for a Ren banquet in the 80s

[MacLowlife]

Not a fan of the look personally but J. Charles "Scotty" Thompson highlights it in his book, So you're Going to Wear the Kilt (SYGTWTK) and uses a Gaelic name for it that I can't recall off hand. It is sold as a "chieftain waistcoat" by Scotweb and other vendors and it's actually featured on the 1989 paperback edition of SYGTWTK though that was likely a publisher's decision.

I agree that it's a theatrical look but the Thompson book has been around since the 1970s so there's at least a 30-40 year history to the garment. It's part of the pseudo historical look that Highland outfitters having been pushing on men who either don't want to wear a necktie and tweed to a weekend festival or want to evoke what they imagine to be the look of the brave Highland warriors from days of yore rather than dressing like contemporary Highland gentlemen. That look is also appealing to those in hotter climes where tweed can be a bit oppressive at times.

It's not a look for me, but once something has been sold for a few decades, you're bound to see some people wearing it.

I know a singer from Glasgow that likes to wear this kind of outfit when he's on stage and I know a few others that like to wear this kind of outfit to the Highland Games.


I think it looks like a costume and an inaccurate one at that for the centuries it evokes.

Nathan, you beat me to it.

I think Thompson's book may be even older than the 70's. For many kilt wearers that makes it ancient and honorable. And older than their fathers.

I suspect it owes more to Robin Hood than to the actual Brigadoon, but Brigadoonery it is.

PS. OCR, your shirt and vest remind me of that time not so long ago in America when "theatrical" was high praise for men's clothing, not a reason to go home and change- when purple cloaks and broad brimmed hats hung in closets next to outrageous flared trousers and vests of all kinds.

And they look very good on you, by the way.

[Nathan]

On the not historical side of things, perhaps someone could help clarify something. Shirts of this nature or close to it would have been worn at some point. There must be a reason they are used to portray everyone from pirates to Robin Hood. when I google medieval shirt, there are several laced front shirts shown, some with collars and some without.

Perhaps it's the addition of the collar that makes them ahistorical? Is the modern "ghillie shirt" similar to any shirt that actually was worn in Europe at any time and, if so, when and where?

Would a European shirt of this nature have been worn in Scotland as underwear during any era? This blog shows a collarless version as a historical shirt style but offers no actual context so I'm hesitant to put any weight in it.

http://www.kingandallen.co.uk/blog/t...-of-the-shirt/

Any textile historians want to trace the origin of the puffy sleeved, laced front shirt?

N

[neloon]

... uses a Gaelic name for it that I can't recall off hand.

Usually called a "peitan" which is just Gaelic for "waistcoat". Quite popular at ceilidhs in the 1980s in a version much plainer than shown here.
Alan

[MacKenzie]

Nathan, I believe the "origins" section in the blog post you linked answers your question. Until the late 19th century shirts were undergarments and made one-size-fits-all. The (short) shirt is the evolution of the leine.

ETA: And it is my understanding that once the outer garments evolved from full coverage the lace/fringe/decoration was added to cover the area of the shirt that the outer garment (vest?) didn't cover.