Matching like a Scot

[Cygnus]

I think I finally get it!

As an admittedly ignorant American, I have struggled to wrap my mind around the advice given by our local Scots (principally Jock Scot) to not be so "matchy-matchy" when it comes to highland dress. I'd look at outfits and see clashing colours left and right and just couldn't do it.

But this evening I was perusing pictures of The Highlanders of Scotland and paying extra attention to waistcoat colours when the lightbulb flickered briefly and switched on (albeit dimly). The kilt is to Scots what blue jeans are to Americans!

I know it sounds odd, but if you look at "normally-dressed" citizens of the US (in particular, though the same could be applied to many countries now days), you'll notice that when blue jeans are worn nobody makes any effort to match their other clothing to them. I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point along the line, blue denim became "neutral".

I imagine the Highlander back when kilts were worn more regularly but after the romanticization of clan tartans - such a man would have one kilt in the tartan of his clan (and maybe a hunting variant). If he had to match everything he wore to that one kilt, his wardrobe would start to look a bit bland over time. So, in much the same way as has happened with blue jeans, I imagine the kilt found its way to that "neutral" ground to those who were accustomed to seeing it.

That might not be exactly how it is, but for once the advice to not be so worried about matching makes sense to me - I hope the analogy is helpful to someone else who is having the same trouble!

EDIT: I'll admit that it's not exactly the same and that it is a good idea to match some accessories to colours in the kilt, but the idea that you don't need to to still look well turned out compares well to jeans in my mind.