Hose to Kilt Combo

[OC Richard]

Almost everywhere else I've read (or watched; e.g., on USA Kilts's monthly Kilts and Culture videos, the typical advice is to pair the hose with a dominant color in the kilt and/or jacket.

With Jock Scot here you get the tradition-based Highland Scottish view of things.

With me you get the historical view on things (when wearing my Historian Hat) or the view grounded in standard colour and design concepts (when wearing my Art Degree/Art Department Hat).

With USA Kilts you get the current American view.

The truth is that in Highland Dress the concept of matching jacket and hose to the colours of the kilt has never existed. Anyone who proposed that is speaking from their own ideas, not of Highland Scottish ideas, nor of standard art design ideas.

Now putting on my Art Department hat, and purely speaking from a design standpoint, matching never works.

You wouldn't decorate the interior of your house having the walls, carpet, all furniture, all artwork on the walls the same colour.

The trick is to co-ordinate, which is the diametric opposite of match. That's why when you go to the paint section they'll have brochures giving three-colour paint schemes.

Three-colour schemes are also standard in fashion, and a Highland outfit can be viewed from a fashion standpoint (though as I said this isn't traditional).

With a Highland outfit you have three main bands of colour: jacket, kilt, hose. Co-ordinating these means NONE of them matching.

Now to put my Historian Hat on, there is indeed a longstanding practice in Highland Day Dress to match the tweed of the jacket to the hose colour. (The designer would balk at this! You have three colour-blocks, design revolves around "rules of three", why throw away one of the three?)

Yet, going back to Victorian times up through the 1960s there was a longstanding idea of matching tweed and hose. Articles about Highland Dress mention this over and over, and it's seen in countless paintings and photographs.

Here starting in the 1860s are fifteen examples of men matching their hose colour to their tweed jacket colour