The ideal time for the black argyll

[Jock Scot]

Jock,

i agree woth you. I tend to wear my Argyle a lot. However, I always wear it with a dress shirt, tie, and either a belt or waistcoat, and with highly polished shoes. Never informally and never with a patterned shirt, open collar or casual shoes. To me, the argyle is for formal occasions where a black tie might wind up being too much and where a tweed might be perceived as being too informal: a narrow band, perhaps but one in which there is definitely room for a formal order of dress, and which suits itself well to a dark coat, tie and shiny shoes. The argyle, therefore, works well for me.

My my rule of thumb is, when a black tie would be too much, perhaps an Argyle might work well. If not, go for tweed. After all, it is hard to knock a well dressed kilted gent dressed in a nice tweed, especially if the shoes are well polished and an attention paid to detail. The Argly should therefore fit between tweeted and black tie.

Alright, I think I detect a trans-Atlantic misunderstanding here. Perhaps I am wrong, but the above post seems to confirm a suspicion that I have had about this thread for some time, that many outwith the UK regard a suit as formal? Also in the UK, a "dress shirt" is not a shirt worn with a lounge/business suit. A "dress shirt" in UK terms is worn with formal black/white tie evening attire and a shirt worn with a suit is well, just a shirt.

To complicate things a tad, the formal morning suit does not actually require a "dress shirt", an ordinary white shirt(other coloured options are sometimes worn by some ) is required. So in the UK a morning suit is as formal as a "black/white tie" evening event, except its worn during the day.

So to put all that into kilt attire eqivalent. The tweed argyll is the equivalent of a Saxon business/lounge suit(not formal) and the BBSBA is eqivalent to the morning suit(day time formal). It follows then that the tweed argyll(with plain and patterned shirt options) covers everything from a BBQ up to and including events requiring a business/lounge suit----plus a tad on occasion. So extremely versatile and in fact covers far more options than the Saxon suit.

On the other hand the BBSBA, in its daytime mode, is formal(UK definition), it has no other place in daytime use.

I think it may help to remember that Saxon attire and kilt attire conventions started life from two very different places and cultures, so this idea that a tweed argyll, for example, is a sports coat is quite incorrect. For what it is worth, I think that if one chooses to wear kilt attire within the kilt attire conventions then it is down to those that want to do it properly to understand those kilt attire conventions, and to do that one has to ignore certain Saxon attire conventions completely, to grasp it. Then and only then, can one successfully "marry up" kilt attire conventions to a predominantly Saxon attire event.

Hope this helps.