HoE 'Crail' Jacket From Kilts Wi Hae

[Grae]

This is the classic Crail Jacket.

Looks very good with dark tie as well.

[bodhran4me]

OCRichard, the cheapest I saw these particular jackets would have been CDN$515 + 22shipping + 70tax = $607

Kilts Wi Hae is $375, all in with the possibility of duties/customs. Of course I am hoping for none but that gives me $232 to 'break even'. I am hoping I wind up with the right end of the stick.

If you wish to buy a 44L from the ebay listing I will do a side-by-side I would actually be interested in seeing one just to see what you get for the CDN$143 (including shipping). I know kilts4less has the same/similar in grey arrochar tweed for CDN$330 s&h incl. Though the HoE doesn't mention arrochar it is in the ad for KWH as well as in others I have seen.

I do agree they look better in person. The fit of the HoE jackets was far better to my eye than the other jackets they had available. I tried it on with my 16oz Lochcarron Maple Leaf and it was the fan favourite, but at over $600 it was left behind. Certainly , if I did intend to spend that amount I would have bought from the shop, even if it was a bit more dear. I just hope if I do wind up with some crazy customs amount that the egg on my face doesn't get on the jacket!

In another vein, I really do like the hose the fellow in the forefront on the right of the highland games shot is wearing.

[Jock Scot]

Attachment 37229

This is the classic Crail jacket I think .

Well yes it may be, although I doubt that the tailor or owner would have even heard of that description at the time it left the shop in the 1930's, as it is a bespoke garment. These descriptive names for garments are a relatively new idea and far from consistent between one manufacturer to the wider market and another.

[OC Richard]

Yes that would be an interesting (to me) avenue of research: what the makers and wearers called various items of Highland Dress at various times in the past.

In Victorian times there was a bewildering variety of Highland jacket cuts: skirts/no skirts, cutaway, various lapel styles, various cuff styles, and a seemingly endless variety of pocket number, style, and placement.

I'm guessing that these things were mostly called "jackets" but for sure the word "doublet" was used in the 19th century to refer to the specifically Highland jacket with the pocketlike skirts.

And by the 1930s "Argyll" was being used to refer to the style of jacket we still usually call Argyll today: a cutaway jacket with open lapels and gauntlet cuffs.

But I've not come across the current distinctions of "Crail" and "Braemar" in any older publications.

One interesting thing is that Scottish publications from the 1920s through 1940s use "waistcoat" and "vest" interchangeably, in other words "vest" had the same meaning in Scotland as it did in the USA during that time. Evidently "vest" underwent a semantic shift in Scotland sometime in the second half of the 20th century, while the usage in the USA remained unchanged.

[Laird O'the Cowcaddens]

The only time I heard the word VEST, was to describe a item of clothing worn under my shirt. Colloquially known as a "simmit" or "singlet". I guess I'm telling my age and where I grew up. LOL

[Grae]

Different highland wear shops may have promoted their own name for their Jackets and these terms are used interchangeably by people, and it may just come down to cuff styles, I have come to understand that Crail jacket is plain cuff , not gaunlet (Argyll) or the Braemar cuff style. Kilt Day Jacket is a good term, with details such as Argyll, Braemar or Crail cuffs being specified by purchaser or maker. Kinloch Anderson use Day Jacket on their website.

[OC Richard]

For sure Grae those terms are used differently by various firms today, with HOE being the most obvious outlier.

But in the 1920s and 1930s the term Argyll jacket was being used in the same way that most people use it today, meaning the cutaway jacket with Gauntlet cuffs. AFAIK the terms "crail" and "Braemar" are modern.

Here's "Argyle" used for an Argyll jacket in the 1920s. It's like our Argyll jackets of black Barathea with square silver buttons, but it appears to have satin lapels.



In the same 1920s Scottish publication we have "vest" used in the sense it has retained in the USA