Not too long ago a new member to X Marks the Scot.com posted a question about the levels of formality in highland attire. The two of us each thought that the best way to illustrate this was to dig up various previously posted photos and offer them as guide to these various stages or levels of formality as we saw them.
We got to thinking about how often this question comes up, especially for the North Americans on our forum. The world we live in is far more casual than the one of our grandparents' day and children are not generally taught about, or familiar with, expected levels of dress as they grow up.
We thought it would be a useful project for each of us to take a single tartan kilt and come up with ten different outfits that ranged from the utmost casual to white tie formal. This would also be a chance to show how truly versatile the kilt is. To make this as helpful as possible, to the most people, I chose the red-based Royal Stewart tartan and Jamie chose the green-based Black Watch tartan for their kilts. These are universal tartans that many own and most are familiar with. Both kilts are traditionally made and of traditional wool tartan cloth.
Using what we have learned on XMTS over the last couple of years and combining it with our own personal sense of style we present this visual guide to help others better understand how to dress up or dress down a kilted outfit.
I have decided to post my photos from this little project here with my explaination of each, I will start withthe first outfit being casual and move up to White Tie.
#1 Very Casual
Notes: Here would be a typical hiking outfit for me in spring or fall, the hose can be rolled down and if it gets too hot I'm wearing a shirt under the sweater. I could just as easily wear a Rugby shirt or a T-Shirt with this outfit depending on the weather. I tend to forgo head wear unless necessary. Even though it is a simple hiking outfit, there is no reason to be sloppy, so I have ensured that the hose and sweater match, thus if I feel like going out after the hike to the local pub to watch a game I'll fit in as well as kilted guy ever does in a Canadian pub. For the most part recently with our climate I've been wearing an outfit much like this one, so much so that my twin brother who is very much used to seeing me in a kilt is now threatening to call me sweater guy. I am wearing a Freelander Sporran that seems to work well with the Hiking Boots, notice no flashes are really needed for hiking.
No comments:
Post a Comment