Semple approach to Traditional Highland Dress

[OC Richard]

...the paler fawns and 'stone' shades of tweed with conventional clan tartans now seem to be less popular. And so the Semple illustrations seem now seem quaintly old-fashioned.

Yes it's interesting that most of the Semple illustrations show stone, fawn, and pale grey. Lovat blue and Lovat green appear but often a bit more pale.

And it's not just those illustrations, there are colour photos from Highland Games in the 1950s and 1960s showing the same tweed colours.

For whatever reason by the 1960s and 1970s most of the jackets become Lovat Blue and Lovat Green, with Moss probably the third most-seen. I have a photo somewhere (I can't find it) of around 20 men at a Highland Games and all of them are wearing either Lovat Blue or Lovat Green.

I'll go with Moss and Fawn over the Lovats any day.

Most of the Highland Dress outfitters I see here in northern Scotland have their shop-windows display the latest trends - no doubt to attract the young gent getting kitted out for his wedding and the like. The current fashion is for all grey - which makes the whole outfit look as if it has been given a dunking in black dye - not enough to make eveything totally black, but close enough.

Yes kilt hire has gone through a Grey Scale fad which sadly isn't quite over yet. And its apparent replacement, an all-black fad.

perhaps we here a Xmarks should start a revivalist movement...

Yes! It's starting already.

[Janner52]

All of the jacket colours in the Semple illustrations look good. I tend to agree that the lighter colours look good and work better. I also like Lovat Green. The modern monochromatic colours used both for the kilt, jacket and hose take away the contrast between the kilt and accessories, which is what gives it its style.

The exception, in my view, is the navy blue which works well in a more dignified environment in place of the black Argyll with silver buttons. A garment of which I am not a fan. Especially as a pipe band uniform.