Is it too weird to wear an arisaid in 2026 AD?

[NHhighlander]

• Arisaid, is it worth it? (as in, is it the done thing?)
• Any advice regarding design, etc., please?

Yes, trying hard not to overthink, but the stakes are high… as in, my wife’s feelings, don't want them hurt.

Wife, who’s the US-born genetic Scot having just been able to successfully deepen in exploring her maiden-name origins as of 3 years ago (inspired by our first New Hampshire Highland Games, now our not-to-miss yearly event), is getting us both to go to the homeland this August (first time!) as part of the NHScot contingent, plus a couple weeks for Clan Donnachaidh events and ancestors’ locations especially around Elgin. For my part, I’m just the multi-cultural loud enthusiast that I am, with a well established track record in three-and-a-half continents of doing things my own way. She’s the stable and saner one.

For me, weaving a Duncan tartan from scratch, starting with building the corresponding weaving loom “is the natural thing.” Because, see, “I do my own things my way.” Then, I do like to drag my wife along. Manly thing innit? Sometimes she’ll even let me. Not always with happy results: We got all dressed up (costumed?) for a Texas Czech event in what my father had lovingly recreated for her as ethnic attire from his own parents’ town area, to be confronted there by a nasty Moravian Kilt Kop equivalent (family leans mountains Hussite. Bad blood 500 years old... sigh). Obviously we never again attended any Czech event. I wouldn’t want a repeat of that experience in Scotland.

BUT. At our local Highland Games I see ladies wearing men’s kilts, and it feels a bit odd to consider a kilt for my beloved. Shouldn’t it be an arisaid? Then, as I try to learn more about "classic" Highlander women’s dress (I was writing “ladies’,” but reflected that the arisaid was commoner’s clothing, no “lady” would be caught wearing it back then, “formal” would have been a full length dress, which some women do wear at the Games, but then that makes me feel we’re risking a slide into RenFair look-and-feel…). Yes, overthinking, guilty as charged.

I’ve done as much basic research as I could.
VERY slim pickings. Tomes and whole libraries and even a museum about kilts. Almost zero on arisaids. If anyone has any influence with the National Museums Scotland, could you ask them to at least post some pictures? They do have many, many arisaid items in their storage warehouses, but... https://www.nms.ac.uk/collections/se...eyword=arisaid Their one-pager is very nice, https://www.nms.ac.uk/discover-catal...e-18th-century , the Wikipedia article decent, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arisaid yet of course it’s the Peter E MacDonald article still the best source IMHO, http://www.scottishtartans.co.uk/Mus...male_dress.pdf “this overview will spur the reader to further study of this oft neglected subject.” Indeed…

Bottom line. I “want” to make my girl an arisaid.

The “recipe” appears to be simple. Dominant off-white background (Tartan Register uses “Wilson White,” RGB=F8F8F8, which is actually greyish, I would go for “natural” wool, a bit cream or ivory)). Then a sett pattern, hmmm, Duncan, 2x Green, 1x Dark Blue, a dash of Red on the blue, White, Black on green. No biggie. In the grand scheme of things, the Tartan Register’s business model is precisely to have people create patterns (and pay to register them…), thus the whole inventing of a pattern is an encouraged and welcome thing… (I wonder what will happen to the Dalgliesh-registered patterns, but that’s not my problem)

However. Oh well, if anything goes, I guess that I’m on my own regarding the sanity of the experiment.

Alas, my dearest is so stable in her mind and attitude (and a life saver for me, not just diagnosed ADD but actually often couldn’t care less about being outlandishly creative and not noticing the consequences), that she has trouble envisioning possibilities. Thus, asking *her* opinion, which should be an “obvious” way to deal with my question on whether to even consider this additional project (after our loom, then weaving tartan for my kilt, then making the kilt… yay!), but I do like to plan ahead, even if it doesn’t look like I do, and I do like to hear people’s advice, and sometimes even will follow it… I’ve read all 10 pages of one of the several threads on X-marks regarding American tourists wearing kilts in Scotland, hmm, concerns of meeting that Moravian gentleman again.

One good thing about arisaids, it appears there is a lot of precedent on being used for other purposes than wearing it. A nice light wool blanket would end up useful, if wearing it is a fail.

So, please, let’s you opinionate and have a say… Arisaid, worth it? Design ideas (or precedent!!!!!) for a Duncan/ Donnachaidh (even Robertson) arisaid?

[cessna152towser]

Here in Scotland, I have very rarely seen a lady wearing an arisaid, even at traditional Scottish gatherings. It is not something for every day wear, but I think it would be well received in the context of your planned clan gathering in the Elgin area, and as you say it could be otherwise useful as a blanket.
If you and your wife both want to create an arisaid for her then I would say go for it.

[Pleater]

I think you might need to separate costume events where the clothing is deliberately anachronistic or even fanciful and the venue is specifically dedicated to people of like minds and intentions, from those more everyday events where clothes are more everyday even if they are more niche.

I wore kilts which you'd probably regard as male garments seventy years ago, fastening on the right with leather strap and buckle - they were rather long when I first got them but I wore them for some years. They were second hand or more when they came to me in the mid 1950s. I never noticed when they vanished from my wardrobe, but they became well worn and rather shabby and I still wore them.

As our weather is famously variable I do have plaids which are useful items of clothing and not too outre to wear in the street either neatly folded and wrapped - they are worn over the left shoulder but not drawn so tight as the military equivalent worn by drummers and pipers. You might consider something like that for your wife.

A woman's kilt would be 27 inches long - to my way of thinking, as I grew up in the 1950s when woollen skirts were normal wear but I do have several ankle length kilts -, perhaps as I have lived through fashions where skirts have varied from mini to maxi and so have my contemporaries here in England.

The first consideration, I feel should be to decide if you are recreating a costume from many centuries past which would not actually be contemporaneous with a kilt or making a garment which if not exactly every day wear is not too unusual or startling.

Anne the Pleater

[OC Richard]

It's a great question.

From A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland (1703)

The ancient dress worn by the women, and which is yet wore by some of the Vulgar, called Arisad, is a white Plade, having a few small stripes of black, blew, and red; it reached from the Neck to the Heels, and was tied before the breast with a Buckle of Silver, or Brass, according to the Quality of the Person. I have seen some of the former of a hundred Marks value; it was broad as any ordinary Pewter Plate, the whole curiously engraven with various Animals etc. There was a lesser Buckle, which was wore in the middle of the larger, and above two Ounces in weight; it had in the Center a large piece of Chrystal, or some finer Stone, and this was set all around with several finer Stones of a lesser size.

At least here in the USA, due to the popularity of Outlander, an arisaid of the style created by the Outlander costume designer wouldn't seem out of place at one of our local Highland Games. Just last weekend, at our largest Southern California Games, I saw a couple gents walking around in full Outlander costume, and they didn't stand out from the crowd all that much.

BTW as we see from the quote above the Outlander-created arisaid is quite different to the historical garment (Earasaid in the Gaelic).

About modern women's Highland Dress, when I started playing in Pipe Bands in the mid-1970s putting women into men's Highland Dress wasn't yet a thing.

Here's a Pipe Band from Scotland from that time, showing a female piper in a female skirt, hose, and shoes. (She is however wearing a men's necktie and Glengarry as we see.)

With the men notice that only a couple are wearing Ghillies, which hadn't yet become a Pipe Band thing.



Compare that to what you see now, women wearing the same uniform as the men, and sometimes forming half the band:



I don't know about Scotland, but in Canada in the old days Pipe Bands were segregated, the so-called "Ladies' Pipe Bands" generally wearing hideous costumes



Not that the men were far behind, with lace jabots, horsehair sporrans, tartan hose, buckled shoes, etc.

[Jock Scot]

I really don't want to be unkind, but your wife could well be the only person wearing an arisaid in Scotland! Apart from, perhaps, a dummy in a museum! In a fairly long life I have never seen one worn, out and about. However if your wife wants one in the USA and you want to make it, then carry on. But....................

[NHhighlander]

There are mysteries in life, and woman's fashion is one of the hardest ones for someone like I to understand, especially something like the wearing of a modern arisaid during a visit to Scotland, which involves so many layers of culture, custom, and social aspects, besides the mere technicalities (!) of history and weaving technique and design.

I really appreciate y'all's answers, as each one addressed several of the many dimension, not just with data, but also with wisdom and experience.

Then, I must also admit that I had missed one very obvious resource in trying to do my homework before posting, worth mentioning here for the next bloke (or lady) searching this very topic: we, Xmarks itself. It turns out that there is a non-trivial forum section on Ladies Kilt, Skirt and Tartan Wear https://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f340/index2.html
Where, (embarrassed facepalm) the arisaid question has been asked several times already (I feel so one year old... Wait, I am one year old. Sigh), although, and gratitude to each one of you again, some of the information and opinion contributed now in AD 2026 does add and improve what came before. Without solving it, but, hey, precisely, that seems to be a core of this issue. The arisaid is an interesting topic, and, very much indeed, not much researched yet, even in its "mere" historical aspects.

Bottom line: for the Ploskonka/Duncan 2026 Scotland visit, most likely no "arisaid." The worst thing would be precisely the result of being too fully successful in reconstructing a "real" one: here come the Americans to show us how it should be done. Yikes! Or, almost worse (could it be worse?) to be seen, compared, to a dummy in a museum....

Yes to "something family tartan related," most importantly, for whatever that is, something agreed upon together, certainly learning from the information and opinion you have kindly provided, also what we see in pictures of previous clan gatherings, etc.
"Might" try, some time in the future, to go for the best I can figure out as an arisaid or whatever for late 18th century in Nova Scotia for reenactment purposes, but that is a different situation place time.

I really appreciate and feel the support of Xmarks, especially in this matter with loaded emotional aspects for me, where my ignorance shows off more than usual.

[jsrnephdoc]

Wife, who’s the US-born genetic Scot having just been able to successfully deepen in exploring her maiden-name origins as of 3 years ago (inspired by our first New Hampshire Highland Games, now our not-to-miss yearly event), is getting us both to go to the homeland this August (first time!) as part of the NHScot contingent, plus a couple weeks for Clan Donnachaidh events and ancestors’ locations especially around Elgin. For my part, I’m just the multi-cultural loud enthusiast that I am, with a well established track record in three-and-a-half continents of doing things my own way. She’s the stable and saner one.

I guess I'm responding to the THREAD, rather than solely to the loom-builder, but here's an example of the Clan Donnachaidh Chieftain managing to smile graciously in the presence of my Dad and my sister, both in tartan:

This was decades ago; I have no idea whatsoever whether he's still the Chieftain. I did email the clan secretary a few months ago asking whether I'd be greeted graciously if I showed up for a clan gathering wearing Robertson Red (white line); thus far, no response. I've read somewhere that the modification may have been intended originally for wearing solely by the Chieftain and his immediate family!

But, if you're in Scotland in August, you MUST attend the Royal Military Tattoo in Edinburgh, and perhaps the World Piping Championships in Glasgow (we missed those on my last visit, summer 2023). And, given your interest in weaving, a tour of Locharron Mills in Selkirk should be on your agenda as well (they weave fabric for some VERY important people ). The tour is extensive, and I'm sure you'd have oodles of questions to ask in their production facility.

But this thread now touches on SO many topics:

1. Women's wear: my own first kilted experiences were in college, where I wore my own sister's kilt (not the muted one in the photo; in my dim memory it was full-on STOPLIGHT red) in the school's pipe band. I don't remember whether it fastened with velcro or with buckles, nor on which side the outer apron fastened. OCR has told me that doing so was in violation of one firmly held tenet: all the pipers should be in the same tartan.
2. Women's wear (part deux): Pleater tells us she wore men's kilts decades ago, AND in the UK, so it may be acceptable for me to return my sister's favor by passing my now too large Robertson ancient hunting kilt to her.
3. Ghillie Brogues: (out of favor among native purists as a fanciful "invention" celebrating something that never was—servants carrying their landowner bosses through the peat bogs while wearing tongueless shoes that laced up the legs to keep them on while permitting the feet to dry out afterwards).
4. Where (if ever) to wear a plaid in Scotland (I got nuthin' on that one).

And, I must confess that the frequently-expressed convictions here that Ghillie Brogues are almost EVIL, or that the only acceptable bow tie to wear with a PC jacket must be solid black (or at apex, solid white), strike me as at least curious, given that the anchor of "modern" highland ness (the knee length "little" kilt) seems also to have been an invention for military use rarely worn by civilians as an everyday garment.

(no intention to ruffle feathers; just curiosity)

Oh, and one last shot: looking anew at that jpeg, it appears the chieftain himself is in Robertson Red (white line), so IF you attend, perhaps you might inquire whether my having some of it woven for me to wear would be unseemly