Where to get a high quality Ghillie Shirt (100% cotton)

[EagleJCS]

So my question for @OC Richard and any other pipers that do gigs like that: Do people ask or comment about what you're wearing?

I stopped doing solo gigs a few years ago and am no longer competing with the pipe band due to some shoulder issues. When I did do private gigs, I would advise them that I didn't have the full-on military look with the feather bonnet, etc., but could probably find someone for them if that's they were looking for. I would then describe what I would be wearing, with a couple of options depending on the formality of the event. That was OK by most people because they wanted the tunes/sound more than the visual spectacle.

Most gigs, I wound up wearing a long black tie, white button-down collar long sleeve shirt, Argyle jacket with gauntlet cuffs and the typical square silver/chrome buttons and a Balmoral hat (when outdoors - indoors, no hat). Hose were typically my bottle-green hose. I would wear either red flashes or my bottle green flashes. For sporran, I usually wore my full mask badger, but a couple of times I was asked to wear my plain black leather with tassels instead. Kilt was my red Scott until I sold it off. I then wore my band kilt (ancient Henderson) until I got a new green Scott kilt.

[OC Richard]

All this got me to thinking. I have been in attendance at several occasions where a piper-for-hire played. Their dress choice has ranged from the guy in the YouTube video I posted earlier, to smart, "traditional" daywear, to a full blown drum/pipe major including the bearskin.

Most pipers play in bands and for many the kit their band issued them is the only Highland attire they have.

So prior to the 1970s when bands either wore civilian Evening Dress or military-style Full Dress that's how pipers would show up at gigs.

Then in the 1970s and 1980s a new band kit emerged: black Argyll + black Glengarry + white hose + black Ghillies. So pipers would show up like that.

Lastly in the 2000's bands ditched their jackets and white hose and the current pipe band kit emerged: black waistcoat + black Glengarry + black hose + black Ghillies. This is in the process of changing, with more bands going with tweed waistcoats and variously-coloured hose. A few daring bands are switching to Balmorals. And thus will most pipers appear at gigs.

A minority of pipers spend fair amounts of money on personal kit and are more fashion-conscious. Some maintain Evening outfits for more formal gigs. A few maintain the old military-style Full Dress.

Then we used to have one piper around here (in truth calling him a "piper" is being kind) who would show up for gigs in a dirty white shirt, girl's plaid skirt, athletic socks, and a strange fake sporran.

I do need to point out that pipers don't wear bearskin hats, neither do Highland soldiers. They wear Feather Bonnets.

In the Scots Guards you have mixed kit, with the pipers wearing kilts and Feather Bonnets and the rest of the regiment (including the Drum Major and drummers in the Pipes & Drums) wearing the ordinary Guards uniform of black trousers, scarlet tunics, and bearskin hats.

So my question for Richard and any other pipers that do gigs like that: Do people ask or comment about what you're wearing?

Generally clients assume that the piper will show up looking fit for purpose.

It's not common, but I have had clients ask for a photo of me in costume.

I'm near Hollywood and those people are sometimes very show-conscious. I've played at weddings where there's an actual script.

I've done events where the show-runner dictates what the musicians wear, generally entirely in black, so I've piped in black trousers, black shirt, and black tie. One show-runner said our band had to wear black pants and "jewel-toned" shirts. (We ended up in Emerald green, Sapphire blue, Ruby red, etc.) I played for one wedding held out in the desert where all the musicians had to be dressed head-to-foot in desert tan/khaki/stone outfits so we blended with the surroundings.

At one event the musicians had to go to the makeup room before performing (we sneaked around a back way and avoided it, but one woman got caught and joined us in full stage makeup).

Back in the 1980s and 1990s I was doing 40 or 50 weddings a year and I always enquired about the "wedding colours" beforehand. I would do my best to fit the colour-scheme and Brides appreciated it. Likewise when I play school gigs I try to match the school colours- it wouldn't do to show up wearing their rival's colours!

[OC Richard]

Lest we lay all the blame for "pirate shirts" and "chieftains vests" at the feet of Americans and Hollywood, we should acknowledge the Scots who embraced those very things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n24v5_sOx0Q

[OC Richard]

So the pipers/bands appearing in these album covers are:

Top left: civilian piper (possibly in a police pipe band, several of those dressed that way)

Top right: The Royal Scots

Bottom left and centre: The Scots Guards

Bottom right: The Kings Own Scottish Borderers

[jsrnephdoc]

So the pipers/bands appearing in these album covers are:

Top left: civilian piper (possibly in a police pipe band, several of those dressed that way)

Top right: The Royal Scots

Bottom left and centre: The Scots Guards

Bottom right: The Kings Own Scottish Borderers

Aren't there trademark or intellectual property statutes that require album covers to display correctly and identify the ensemble actually performing the music on the recording?

Recently, I went WAY down a rabbit hole (in the wrong direction) after watching the film that won the Oscar this year for "Best Documentary" (The Only Girl in the Orchestra, a fascinating short biography of the very first woman hired by the NY Philharmonic (not until 1966), learning, along the way, that symphonic orchestras in Europe AND the US embraced blatant gender discrimination for centuries when hiring musicians (the Vienna Philharmonic wouldn't even let women audition until the 1990s)!

I had just recently listened to Leonard Bernstein conducting the enormous Mahler 2nd Symphony in the UK (featured in Bradley Cooper's Bernstein film portrait). I read that the vocal chorus was the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and that the performance was in Ely Cathedral, then drew the stupid conclusion that I must have missed Ely in my 2023 visit to Scotland (it's actually a small town near Cambridge, England, with an absolutely stunning 1,000+ year old cathedral.

MY purpose was to count the number of women added to the orchestra in the years between 1966 (when Lenny hired that double bassist) and 1973, when that famous UK performance occured. However, given a choice between listening to the Mahler 2nd and doing pretty much ANYTHING else would favor Mahler, so I probably listened to and watched the entire music video from DG 2 or 3 times, counting only 2 women (both harpists​), before realizing that the ensemble was NOT the NY Phil, but the London Symphony! Of course, in my case the symphony orchestra was correctly identified on the album cover, but I had just ignored it!

And, I cannot imagine being told to wear some of the stuff you've been told to to perform at LA area weddings.

[OC Richard]

Aren't there trademark or intellectual property statutes that require album covers to display correctly and identify the ensemble actually performing the music on the recording?

I don't know anything about UK law. It was quite common, in the days of records and CDs, for companies that specialised in low-cost albums to use random photos for their covers.

About female orchestral musicians, as we've seen the violin sections nowadays are often at least half female, and flutes mostly female.

I know a couple LA area professional "sax guys" who are female, but there's a built-in prejudice, even if the women really good, which these are. (A "sax guy" generally plays sax, flute, clarinet, and even oboe, and oftentimes pennywhistle, bamboo flutes, panpipes, etc.)

Percussion and Brass are perhaps the most persistent male bastions in Orchestras. I play every year for the She Can Play Brass concert which raises scholarship money for promising young female Brass players. (I've tried to talk them into using one of our local superb female pipers, who know all about fighting gender bias, but they seem to like me.)

[Allan Thomson]

Many years ago when the Ghillie/Jacobite shirt was a relatively new fashion based on a notionally historical concept I was bought one along with a slashed Doublet. The Slashed Doublet style seems to have vanished to be replaced by the Chieftain/Swordsman vest. It did make me think should I chose to wear the style again how to make it seem a little more 'authentic' masking the worst bits of the style. I was thinking additional buttons on the front of the jacket (only two were supplied) to allow it to be buttoned higher and a cravat to mask the tie bit of the shirt, probably evolve the cuffs into the gauntlet style of the Argyle might produce something more akin to the previously depicted portraits.

I'm tempted to bring it to my local kiltmaker to see what she could do...of course finding an occasion to wear it for might be challenging- probably a childhood, and I guess a plaid worn like a belted plaid to compliment a phillabeg would be a good move...

[OC Richard]

For sure our earliest full-length painted-from-life professional oil portaits show the slashed doublet.

I'm hazy on Continental fashion, but I think that slashed doublets would have been quite old-fashioned in France, England, etc by 1700 but still in fashion with Highland Dress.

It's two of these portraits that give us our earliest clear views of sporrans.

[jsrnephdoc]

Lest we lay all the blame for "pirate shirts" and "chieftains vests" at the feet of Americans and Hollywood, we should acknowledge the Scots who embraced those very things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n24v5_sOx0Q

And, the AUDIENCE for that performance. They all look like "Amurican" senior citizen tourists just SO grateful to get off that bus!!!