Mixing tartans - yes or no?

[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?

[ThistleDown]

Rex,

I always thought that the Macqueens' cheifly crest was a kind of cat (an heraldic tyger), not a wolf; though the chiefly arms do prominently feature wolves' heads, so I could be mistaken.

And thank you for your answer on cap badges and tartans for these clans - that is a question I had been meaning to ask for some time!

Yes, Corrybrough himself used a tiger as crest and his was the chiefly line of the family. I don't know offhand when arms were acquired by this branch of the MacQueens but, by the mid-18C the estates were so involved that to use the tiger today is a bit "antique". There is no recognised chief in the 21C. The wolf of a cadet branch, that of Polochaig, seems to have been adopted by the remains of the clan by the end of the 18C even though by then the lands had been reassumed by the Mackintoshes. We think that this transference of recognition was an 18C way of selecting a new chief

[Cygnus]

Yes, Corrybrough himself used a tiger as crest and his was the chiefly line of the family. I don't know offhand when arms were acquired by this branch of the MacQueens but, by the mid-18C the estates were so involved that to use the tiger today is a bit "antique". There is no recognised chief in the 21C. The wolf of a cadet branch, that of Polochaig, seems to have been adopted by the remains of the clan by the end of the 18C even though by then the lands had been reassumed by the Mackintoshes. We think that this transference of recognition was an 18C way of selecting a new chief

Good to know. Thank you for your always well-informed responses!

[ThistleDown]

Thank you Rex, I have wondered how it all worked. I look up at Torcastle(it has a grisly reputation) when wetting a line, quite often and have a smile at how the Mackintosh of Torcastle obtained his title from the Camerons.

I do as well, Jock, but the smile is even broader when I recall that this was Lord Lyon's tsk tsk at the Camerons for having caused the government (and the Clan Chattan) so much grief over the centuries.

[Mike_Oettle]

Since I possess only one kilt, not in a clan tartan, I am unlikely to transgress in the area of mixing tartans of different clans.
That said, I do have ties in three tartans (my regimental Graham of Montrose, Jacobite and one matching my kilt), but I have no desire to wear either the Graham or the Jacobite with my kilt.
My first two outings with the kilt were pretty formal, so I wore the matching tie with black shirt and black hose, plus tartan flashes.
But this weekend I have gone more informal, wearing the kilt with green hose (the pair I have on right now are pale grass-green, worn with a white shirt, and yesterday I wore hose in khaki green with a shirt of similar shade) and red flashes. (I could have worn green flashes instead.)
I would be interested to hear whether anyone has an opinion on my choice of bonnet badge. I ordered a St Andrew badge from Tartanweb in January, showing the saint holding his cross, and within a strap and buckle.
It struck me as being appropriate to my tartan, which symbolises the Christian Faith.
Initially I wore it with some blue ribbon (a rosette for Scotland), but last week I cut a square of the tartan to put behind it.
Regards,
Mike

[robbiethepiper]

I wear a political symbol (white cockade) in my bonnet so I feel you can certainly wear a symbol of your religous faith. Please note that I am not a christian, just feel this is your right....

[OC Richard]

Just to bring us back to my original question - what do the style guys think of the idea of kilt in one my clan's tartan and hose in another of the same clan's tartan.

To take a long look at things, going back to the earliest Highland Dress we have clear images of, in the late 17th century and early 18th century, the hose never matched the kilt. Hose were not knit, but cut out of woven fabric yardage and sewn up. The tartan used for hose was a thicker stuff than that used for kilts and tended to be woven in simpler patterns, often using red and white.








These traditional red and white hose were adopted by all the Highland regiments raised in the 18th century are are still worn by the military today:



So when you see nonmatching diced or tartan hose worn in modern times, it's harkening back to the earliest Highland Dress we have good images of.



Knitted hose made to mimick the tartan of the kilt as closely as possible didn't get popular until the mid 19th century. You see a load of those kind of hose in The Highlanders of Scotland (1860s).

Not in hose, but in plaids, there's an entire pipe band that wears mismatched tartans, though it's subtle, two different MacDonald red tartans (the only difference being the presence or absence of a central black line). I really like that, as it's very much in keeping with 18th century Highland Dress. It's the Isle of Skye Pipe Band and here they are:



(I'm talking about the pipers. As you can see the DM is wearing a Cameron of Erracht kilt. I think that guy was a QOH DM but I'm not sure, and he may be wearing his ex-army kilt.)

The tartan of the plaids was copied from the painting above, the jacket worn by the boy holding the golf club.

[Biathlonman]

Many thanks for pulling these images together - you've done some great digging on all our behalf. Have to say the photo of our friend with tartan waistcoat, drink in hand and cigarette in the other is priceless - talk about style! Would that we could all carry that off with such obvious panache.

It may be some time before I wear my formal stuff with the kilt again, but I think red and white diced hose get the final nod. The discussion this all provoked was helpful to some I hope.

[SlackerDrummer]

Not in hose, but in plaids, there's an entire pipe band that wears mismatched tartans, though it's subtle, two different MacDonald red tartans (the only difference being the presence or absence of a central black line). I really like that, as it's very much in keeping with 18th century Highland Dress. It's the Isle of Skye Pipe Band and here they are:



(I'm talking about the pipers. As you can see the DM is wearing a Cameron of Erracht kilt. I think that guy was a QOH DM but I'm not sure, and he may be wearing his ex-army kilt.)

The tartan of the plaids was copied from the painting above, the jacket worn by the boy holding the golf club.

Are you sure all the drummers aren't wearing the Cameron of Erracht? I can see that the drummers are wearing red doublets and it looks like maybe their kilts are darker, but I can't tell for sure. That would be the way many of the regimental bands operate.

[OC Richard]

Sorry I wasn't talking about pipers and drummers wearing different tartans from each other, but rather the mixing of tartans upon the same person, in this case the pipers wearing kilts of one MacDonald tartan and plaids of a different MacDonald tartan (though the two tartans only differ in one stripe). The drummers and drum major also have mixed tartans, but much less subtle, their plaids the same as the pipers but their kilts Cameron of Erracht.

In The Highlanders of Scotland (1860s) there is generally an attempt to match the hose (whether diced or tartan) to the kilt.

11 figures are wearing matching tartan hose.

17 are wearing diced hose made from two colours which appear in the kilt.

However 11 men are wearing diced hose which do not match the kilt.

Only 2 figures are wearing tartan hose in a tartan different from that of the kilt:



I love this, the way the yellow tartan hose complement the kilt while being completely different.


(Note that hose are made from two differing shades of red, rather than red and blue as one would expect given the tartan of the kilt.)