Scrunched Hose

[OC Richard]

When I see bizarre outfits at festivals, I often wonder if it's just that they don't understand or if they're trying to be weirdos.

I think there's a bit of both.

Part of the not understanding, which I've mentioned several times, is the widely-held notion that Highland Dress floats outside of time itself.

I have never seen men in Highland Dress at Dickens, Victorian, or American Civil War events who didn't mix period-appropriate items with 20th century items. (These same people would never dream of mixing non-Highland 19th and 20th century clothing.)

The guy I mentioned was exceptionally resourceful and successful at era-conflation. He not only combined items from a several-hundred-year timespan but also from different degrees of formality and different nationalities to boot (literally; the Native American moccasins were a brilliant touch).

[MacKenzie]

Part of the not understanding, which I've mentioned several times, is the widely-held notion that Highland Dress floats outside of time itself.

I have never seen men in Highland Dress at Dickens, Victorian, or American Civil War events who didn't mix period-appropriate items with 20th century items. (These same people would never dream of mixing non-Highland 19th and 20th century clothing.)

That's probably the best explanation of the misunderstanding of Highland Dress I've ever heard/seen.

And I think that the merging of ren-faire (axe throwing?) and reenactment at Highland Games here in the US is a lot of the reason.

[GG]

When seeing the picture my immediate impression was:

Christmas eve, after everybody has gone to sleep, except a father and his grown-up son. They are staying up for a while and the father is making his son a whisky (making sure that one does not get less than the other one). The atmosphere is cozy. They don’t feel any need to talk, are just enjoying each other’s company.
Celebrating Christmas, they have been kilted, and the fact that they are wearing identical tartans sustains that they are father and son. Now they are relaxing by having scrunched down their kilt socks.

Greg

[jhockin]

Just putting this out there 😉

[OC Richard]

Here's scrunched hose in action!

Watch the Pipe Major on the far right, he's stomping his foot and by the end his hose are down around his shoes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6tammmA-GM&t=13s

I wrote a tune commemorating the event: Stevie's Drooping Hose.

[MacKenzie]

Just putting this out there 😉

The original, traditional Highland footwear.

[Highland Logan]

The original, traditional Highland footwear.

That would be all of humanity. I'm pretty sure once the first guy strapped a dead rabbit to his feet, going without died out pretty quick; of course warmer climates may have had differing options. The painting you chose was by R.R. McIan; great work, but not as accurate as you think. This was one in a series of many for a book titled, The Clans of the Scottish Highlands, by James Logan (no known or presumed relation). This was during the Scottish revival of the 1800's, which was kicked off by Sir Walter Scot.

Frank

[OC Richard]

The original, traditional Highland footwear.

As Highland Logan says, the MacIan drawings need to be taken with a lick of salt. (Which is much bigger than the biggest grain of salt!)

They're fanciful Celtic Revival stuff, done long after the time-period they're supposedly depicting.

To be responsible historians we need to confine ourselves to the earliest contemporary images of Highland Dress. The fact is that our knowledge, the surviving imagery, doesn't go back all that far.

Here's our earliest clear image, our earliest full-length quality portrait, painted in 1660.



Next AFAIK is this portrait from 1700.



About Highland Dress earlier than is seen in these paintings, we can only guess.

That includes Highland footwear earlier than we see here. Yes there's a 16th century description of how the Highlanders made moccasin-like shoes, but we don't know what they looked like.

The closest surviving relatives of the ancient Highland footwear are the pamputai of the Aran islanders. It's possible that ancient Highland shoes were similar.

[Tomo]

Traditional folk / dancing shoes here in Estonia (and Latvia):




Look familiar...

[MacKenzie]

That would be all of humanity.

Sorry. I forgot to append the ... ... to my post.