Note that none of my posts contained anything political or specific to the matter of the Confederacy but concerned fashion and period dressing in a general sense.

I mentioned the visual issue of wearing a predominantly grey kilt with a grey jacket, a problem both when the shades of grey match and when they don't. It had nothing to do with the fact that it was a Confederate jacket or the Confederate tartan.

I mentioned the problem of mixing 20th century items with 1860s dress. This had nothing to do with the fact that the 1860s dress was Confederate.

(The only remotely political thing was me stating that my ancestors fought for the North.)

Back to the topic of keeping things period-correct in general, something just dawned on me, a trap or potential pitfall that hounds those who dabble in Highland Dress.

The American public in general has a vague notion of the dress of various periods. They know that powdered wigs and kneebreeches and buckled shoes go together as part of 1770s dress; they know that stovepipe hats and long frock coats and beards go together as part of 1860s dress.

It would look odd to just about anybody to have somebody dressed in full 1770s attire but wearing a beard and stovepipe hat.

But for some reason to the "general public" any and all items of Highland Dress somehow exist outside the boundries of time itself.

I think it's why we so often see people at Highland Games wearing the strangest mix of various periods, why we see so many modern Highland Dress articles worn with Renaissance clothing at Ren Faires, why we see these Civil War reenactors wearing 20th century Highland Dress items with their Civil War attire. I would hazard to guess that these same reenactors would never wear a non-Highland Dress 20th century article, such as tennis shoes or tie-dye t-shirt, with their Civil War dress.