Quote Originally Posted by Ashworth View Post
Very interesting!
Thank you all for participating and giving the start of an answer to both the MacPherson question and most generally the origin of tying a Balmoral's ribbons, which I am also curious about.

So, with this information about Old Cluny, I imagine that this habit, rather than an old tradition, is mostly anchored in MacPhersons following their chief's fashion practice then, much like the British following Edward VII's habit of unbuttoning his waistcoat's last button. (Well, this one turned way more global!)
Not many MacPhersons seem to be aware of it indeed.
The waistcoat button thing is curious, as contemporary photographic evidence shows men with unfastened bottom waistcoat buttons from a time well before Prince Bertie could have had any fashion influence.

If any prince's style was to be emulated in this way, a far better candidate would have been the gluttonous and self-indulgent Prince Regent, whose regal figure is often depicted as gorged to a button-popping state.

Up until the Victorian era, men's waistcoats matched their frockcoats in length, and buttons below the waist remained unfastened for ease and style. The habit of leaving the lower buttons unfastened in more modern times owes more to equestrian needs than royal absent-mindedness - it is both uncomfortable and near impossible to keep low level buttons fastened while on horseback, and leaving then undone now is as much a status thing as any. You are of the knightly class if you leave them undone.

But that is really an English fashion, and contemporary accounts from prior to 1745 describe how the Highlanders' style was to wear a short jacket with a longer waistcoat protruding far lower. Sometimes it was two waistcoats together. MacIan's 1840s watercolour illustrations for Logan's 'Clans' give examples.