Quote Originally Posted by OC Richard View Post
That's so cool there, Matt!

As usual I take "the long view" of things, and I'm not a fan of the standup-collar formal jackets. Why all of these standup-collar jackets suddenly appeared in the early 20th century who can say, but throughout the last three-quarters of the 19th century and into the beginning of the 20th century nearly all civilian Highland jackets had ordinary collars with lapels, worn with ordinary shirts of the period and ordinary neckties. The standard jacket was the type which evolved into what we now call the "Regulation Doublet". In the old days it was simply called a Doublet.

Then in Highland Dress catalogues in the 1920s a suite of new jackets appeared, the Montrose, the Kenmore, the Prince Charlie. These are spoken of in old catalogues as being recent inventions and being suitable for young, fashionable men while the traditional Doublet was spoken of as being appropriate for older men. At the same time lace jabots became popular, something very rarely seen in the previous three-quarters of a century. (When did the Sherriffmuir appear? It's not in any of my catalogues from the 1920s and 1930s.)

Perhaps WWI had just concluded and the military-style standing collar was viewed as being fashionable? Or people were nostalgic about the jackets of the early 19th century with their very high standing collars? Who can say.

I myself prefer the c1840-1920 look of the Doublet, with ordinary collar and lapels, over these 20th century jackets with militaryesque standing collars.

Here's an old thread I started, back before I had collected a load of old Highland Dress catalogues... now I know that the style of jacket in question was called the "doublet", but I still don't know what the "Celtic" jacket mentioned in that old Henderson catalogue might have been.

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...-jacket-55129/
I somehow missed this post before, so I apologize for the late reply.

Richard, I know you're well-versed in Highland dress, and you've studied it a lot more than I have. But I am not sure I agree with your assertion that standing collars disappeared in civilian dress in the latter half of the 19th century. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know all the proper terminology for the different types of doublets with their minor differences, but as to the point of standing collars, it seems to me that they were very much alive and well, at least in the 1850s-1860s when MacLeay did his portraits. I would presume that they didn't disappear immediately after these portraits, either.

While it's true that the majority of the subjects were wearing ordinary collars and lapels, I see a few that were wearing standing collars with closed-front jackets/doublets. And I'm going to assume these are not military uniform jackets, since they are not the standard red jackets of the British Army (please correct me if I'm wrong on that point). With the exception of one that I know of who was indeed wearing a red jacket with chevrons on the sleeve, the rest seem to be wearing charcoal doublets with standing collars that bear no military insignia or colours.

Are these jackets below considered civilian doublets? Some of them look similar to the one Matt was wearing in the photos above, except that they are worn buttoned at the front instead of open. The overall presentation of the outfits seem rather martial (considering the weaponry and such), and the jackets seem like a military style, but they don't look like military uniforms to me. Again, I'm not very well studied on uniforms of that era, so if these are indeed military jackets, please correct me. I was under the assumption that these were just civilian doublets.