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Highland dress is the national dress of the Highlands and Isles of Scotland. It is often characterised by tartan ( plaid in North America). Specific designs of shirt, jacket, bodice and headwear may also be worn. On rare occasions with clan badges and other devices indicating family and heritage.
Men's Highland dress typically includes a kilt or trews. Although this may consist of clan tartan, it is more usual for tartans to be chosen for aesthetic reasons. A tartan full plaid, fly plaid, or short belted plaid may also be worn but usually only at very formal events or by the groom at a wedding. There are a number of accessories, which may include but are not limited to: a belt, sporran, sgian-dubh, knee-socks with a cuff known as kilt hose, garters, kilt pins and clan badges.
Women's Highland dress is also based on the clan tartan, either that of her birth clan or, if married, that of her spouse's clan if she so chooses. Traditionally, women and girls do not wear kilts but may wear ankle-length tartan , along with a colour-coordinated blouse and vest. A tartan earasaid, sash or shawl (smaller shawl) may also be worn, usually pinned with a brooch, sometimes with a clan badge or other family or cultural motif.
The codification of "proper" Highland dress for formal and semi-formal wear took place during the Victorian era, and these styles have changed little since then (e.g. the Prince Charlie, Sheriffmuir, and regulation jackets have an antique appearance, being based on Victorian military doublets of Highland regiments). In observing "constraints imposed by supposed rules and regulations governing ... what is perceived as permissible in Highland dress", Scottish historian Hugh Cheape writes (2012) that "uniform styles and conformity in dress conventions have emerged since the late nineteenth century and have been encoded in books and tailors' patterns; strict observance is expected and in some circles has become a touchstone of Scottishness. The perpetuation of such views, relatively recently formed, is a self-assumed role of guardians of Scottish 'ethnicity'." He contrasts this mode of regulated Highland dress with the kilt's contemporary "renaissance as a style item ... even a post-modern trend in kilt-wear instigated with the 1970s and 1980s Punk fashion; we see the kilt worn with chunky socks, boots, white T-shirt and black jacket".Cheape (2012), p. 14.
Regardless of formality level, the basis of all modern men's and women's Highland dress starts with the tartan, either as a kilt, trews, arisaid, sash, or shawl. Tartans in Scotland are registered at the Scottish Register of Tartans in Edinburgh, a non-ministerial department and are usually aligned to a clan or branch of a clan; however, tartans can also be registered exclusively for an individual or institution, and many "district" or "national" patterns also exist that have no associations to particular families or organisations.
Historically, weaponry formed a common accessory of men's Highland dress, such as the mattucashlass and the dirk. However, due to the UK's knife laws, small and sword shape are more commonly seen today.
For men's and women's shoes, dance ghillies are thin, foldable turnshoes, now used mostly for indoor wear and Scottish dancing. The sole and uppers cut from one piece of leather, wrapped around the foot from the bottom, laced at the top, and seamed at the heel and toe. Ghillie brogues are thick-soled welted-rand shoes. In both, the laces are wrapped around and tied firmly above the wearer's ankles so that the shoes do not get pulled off in the mud. The shoes lack tongues so the wearer's feet can dry more quickly in the typically damp Scottish weather.
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Near the end of the seventeenth century, Martin Martin gave a description of traditional women's clothing in the Hebrides, the earasaid with its and .
"The ancient dress wore by the women, and which is yet wore by some of the vulgar, called arisad, is a white Full plaid, having a few small stripes of black, blue and red; it reached from the neck to the heels, and was tied before on the breast with a buckle of silver or brass, according to the quality of the person. I have seen some of the former of an hundred marks value; it was broad as any ordinary pewter plate, the whole curiously Animal style etc. There was a lesser buckle which was wore in the middle of the larger, and above two weight; it had in the centre a Smoky quartz, or some finer stone, and this was set all around with several finer stones of a lesser size. The plaid being all round, was tied with a belt below the breast; the belt was of leather, and several pieces of silver intermixed with the leather like a chain. The lower end of the belt has a piece of plate about eight long, and three in breadth, curiously engraven; the end of which was adorned with fine stones, or pieces of red coral. They wore of scarlet cloth, closed at the end as men's Waistcoat, with gold lace round them, having plate with fine stones. The head dress was a fine kerchief of linen strait (tight) about the head, hanging down the back taper-wise; a large lock of hair hangs down their cheeks above their breast, the lower end tied with a knot of ."Martin, Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, (1703), pp.208-209: quoted in Robertson, ed., Inventaires de la Royne Desscosse, Bannatyne Club, (1863) p.lxviii footnote.
According to the English military chaplain Thomas Morer in 1689, Highland men wore plaids about seven or eight () long, which covered from the neck to the knees except the right arm. Beneath the plaid they wore a waistcoat or a shirt to the same length as the drape of the plaid. These were "." Their stockings were made of the same stuff as the plaid and their shoes were called "brocks" (Brogue shoe). Bonnets were blue or "sad" coloured. Morer noted that the fineness of the fabric varied according to the wealth and status of the man.
Scottish Lowlanders and Borderers were dressed much like the English, except both men and women also used a plaid as a cloak. The Lowland women wrapped their plaids over their heads as hoods,Hume Brown, P., Early Travellers in Scotland James Thin (1891 repr. 1978), 269-270, 272, quoting Morer, Thomas, A Short Account of Scotland (1715) whereas Lowland and Border men wore a checkered maud (plaid) wrapped about their upper body.Craig, A. (1837). Parish of Bedrule. New Statistical Account of Scotland (vol. 3). Edinburgh: Blackwood. The maud, woven in a pattern known variously as Border tartan, Falkirk tartan, Shepherd's check, Shepherd's plaidThe Scottish Register of Tartans. and Galashiels grey, became the identifying feature of Border dress as a result of the garment's mention by fashionable Border Scots such as Walter Scott, James Hogg and Henry Scott Riddell and their wearing of it in public.Moffat, A. (2015). Scotland: A history from the earliest times. Edinburgh: Birlinn. Together with Robbie Burns, they can be seen wearing a maud in portraits, etchings and statues.
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