Black dandy culture took center stage, blending heritage and high fashion
The oldest traditional Scottish tartan ever found could be up to 500 years old, according to scientists, who explained it survived because of the lack of air that was getting to it. The remnants of the fabric were found almost 40 years ago in a peat bog in the Glen Affric valley, 15 miles (about 24 km) west of Loch Ness.
In 1333, Italian Gothic artists Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi produced the 'Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus,' a wood-panel painting in tempera and gold leaf. It features the archangel Gabriel in a tartan-patterned mantle, with light highlights where the darker stripes meet, perhaps representing jewels, embroidery, or supplementary weaving. Art historians consider it an example of "Tartar" cloth, which came in a great array of patterns, many more complex than tartan (such as the fine detail in Gabriel's robe in the same painting); patterns of this sort were influential especially on Italian art in the 14th century.
Adorned in an array of chequered of colors and a captivating crisscross pattern, tartan is more than a tangible embodiment of Scotland. The emblematic material is deeply rooted in history and shrouded in multiple fashion statements. A worthy withstander of trends, tartan is forever gracing the catwalks in all manners and forms, from Alexander McQueen and Chanel to Vivienne Westwood.
The Princess of Wales’ tartan outfitting is the product of her relationship with trusted British brands, from Alexander McQueen to Emilia Wickstead. While Queen Elizabeth II’s quintessential patterns were often the Royal Stewart tartan, dating back to 1800 and named after the Stuart dynasty of Scotland, or the Balmoral tartan.
Published in 1842, the 'Vestiarium Scoticum' professed to be a cherished historical document on Scottish clan tartans, based on ancient manuscripts. The true origins of these manuscripts were as fanciful as they were dubious, cited to have come from locations like the Scots College at Douay in France and the monastery of St. Augustine in Cadiz. However, the authenticity of 'Vestiarium Scoticum' was so hotly contested that in 1847, the esteemed Professor George Skene of Glasgow University denounced it as a forgery.
Tartan patterns were loosely associated with the weavers of particular areas, owing in part to differences in availability of natural dyes. It was common for Highlanders to wear whatever was available to them, often a number of different tartans at the same time. The early tartans found in east coast Scotland used red more often, probably because of easier continental Europe trade in the red dye cochineal, while western tartans were more often in blues and greens, owing to the locally available dyes. The greater expense of red dye may have also made it a status symbol. Tartan spread at least somewhat out of the Highlands, but was not universally well received. The General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland in 1575 prohibited the ministers and readers of the church (and their wives) from wearing tartan plaids and other "sumptuous" clothing.
Traditionally made from wool, the strong and hardwearing, water resistant cloth was favored as practical everyday wear by Highlanders, the largely Gaelic-speaking clan societies of Scotland’s north. By the mid-18th century, the bold print became a symbol of allegiance to Charles Edward Stuart, better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, who led an army of tartan-wearing rebels known as the Jacobites into England in 1745.
Following the Jacobites’ final defeat at Culloden in 1746, traditional Highland dress that reflected the region’s rural environment, was banned. The list of prohibited garments included the phillabeg (little kilt), trews (tartan tights), and tartan-patterned trench coats. Those exempt from the ban included the landed gentry and the Highland regiments of the British Army.
During the era of the prohibition, traditional Highland techniques of wool spinning and dyeing, and the weaving of tartan, sharply declined and tartan was all but "culturally relocated as a picturesque ensemble or as the clothing of a hardy and effective fighting force" for the Crown, not a symbol of direct rebellion. The colourful cloth was forcibly abandoned by the original Highland provincial folk, then taken up by the military and consequently by non-Highlander civilians.
The tartan-clad 92nd (Gordon Highlanders) Regiment of Foot set off for Portugal in July 1808 for service in the Peninsular War and was renamed as the 92nd Regiment of Foot in 1809 when it took part in the disastrous Walcheren Campaign in autumn 1809. The regiment returned to Portugal in September 1810 to resume its service under General Viscount Wellesley in the Peninsular War.
The Black Watch regiment were made up of Clan Munro, Clan Fraser of Lovat, Clan Grant, and three companies from Clan Campbell and known as Am Freiceadan Dubh in Gaelic, or "The Black Watch," due to their unruly nature and the dark colors of their government-issued tartan. The original uniform was made up of a 12-yarn plaid of tartan, a red jacket, a black waistcoat, and a dark blue bonnet.
Tartan is thought to have been worn in Scotland since at least the 3rd century CE, yet its precise origins are shrouded in mystery. Unlike tweed, tartan (often mistakenly called “plaid” in the United States) uses a basic “two over two” twill weave to form a tight bright pattern of interlocking stripes, a weaving process that visitors can watch at mills in the Scottish Borders, Highlands, and Edinburgh.
In 1822, King George IV attempted to demonstrate unity by appearing in full Highland dress during the Crown’s first visit to Scotland since before Culloden. But the event sowed the seeds of what critics would later derisively call “tartanry,” the excessive, kitschy use to represent an overly romanticized picture of the country.
Twenty years after King George IV’s wardrobe misstep, Queen Victoria took tartanry to new heights with her purchase of Balmoral Castle. Decorated in wall-to-wall tartan, her weekend retreat solidified Scotland’s transformation from a threat to a vacation destination.
Tartan as a fabric appears to date to at least as early as Roman Britain. The triumphal arch of Volubilis, completed in 217 CE, once featured a bronze statue of Roman Emperor Caracalla; the only surviving fragment of the statue depicts a Caledonian Pictish slave wearing tartan trews. This statue was originally part of a triumphal arch in Volubilis, Morocco, a long stretch away from Scotland. To depict the unmistakable texture of a plaid tartan cloth, the statue was embossed with bronze and silver to create an analogous palette. We have only three feet (less than a meter) of the statue now, but it serves as a testament to one of the oldest known tartans.
Tartan trews are men's trousers for the legs and lower abdomen, a traditional form of tartan tights from Scottish Highland dress. Trews could be trimmed with buckskin, especially on the inner leg to prevent chafing from riding on a horse. Tartan trews shared the fate of other items of Highland dress under the implementation of the Dress Act of 1746, which banned men and boys from wearing the "truis" or "trowse" outside of military service. The disasterous Dress Act lasted until 1782, when it was repealed under the reign of King George III.
Although the weaving of tartan fabric was manufactured using power looms, there still remained many who preferred to weave their own cloth, right up to the present day even.
Walking along Edinburgh’s souvenir shop-lined Royal Mile, it’s clear that Scotland has not slayed the tartan monster.
Fashion designer Alexander McQueen went further by consciously repoliticizing the cloth. For his 1995 “Highland Rape” show, he sent models—some dressed in his Clan MacQueen tartan—staggering down a heather-strewn catwalk to demonstrate the destruction of the Highland people, culture, and land after Culloden. In McQueen’s hands, tartan rebelled against tartanry.
The connection between tartan and golfing clothes is deeply ingrained in both Scottish heritage and the history of the sport. This is because golf originated in Scotland in the 1500s and started when tartan had already long since been an integral part of the Scottish identity. Early golfers often wore kilts that gave them a distinctive style when on the course. Over time, this tartan attire became synonymous with the game of golf, and it seems to have stuck well in today's modern golf scene.
It was this commodification of tartan that 1970's youth culture subverted. Punks, including the Vivienne Westwood-styled Sex Pistols, wore tartan as a finger up to the establishment and very much recognizing its political power.
The Highlands, once cleared of many of its inhabitants following Culloden, were relegated into the “wild” and “empty” idyll of tourist brochures. Scotland became a brand marketed by tartan, mass-produced and spread across the Empire by the British Army, into which Highlanders had been assimilated.
From 1815 there was a concerted effort to register all tartans, and many patterns were created and associated with surnames for the first time. It is likely that which started as localized patterns, resulting from the local availability of dyes, eventually became linked with clans in a particular area and later with Scottish surnames alone.
Scottish dancers may wear an "aboyne" (after the Aboyne Highland Games, where women are not allowed to wear kilts for dancing to this day, and so an outfit was devised as an alternative). The aboyne dress consists of a velvet bodice over a white blouse with a tartan or tartan-like knee-length skirt and white underskirts. A tartan plaid or plaidie is worn with a Scottish-themed brooch pinned to the shoulder and waist.
Early tartans were simple chequered patters of perhaps only two or three colors. The colors were extracted mainly from dye-producing plants, roots, berries and trees local to a specific geographic area. These simple checks or tartans were worn by the people of the district where they were made, and as such became the area or clan tartan.
The oldest tartans (not to be confused with Scottish tartans) are the Tarim Basin Tartans. These were discovered by Elizabeth Barber in 1993. They were found on mummies in Ürümchi, China. Strangely Caucasian in appearance, fragments of cloth on these mummies’ bodies showed an Indo-European origin similar to Neolithic clothing studied in Western Europe.
Sources: (National Geographic) (Oldest.org) (Historic UK)
With the advent of chemical dies, weavers were then able to introduce more elaborate patterns, including brighter and varied color schemes. As clans grew and branched through birth, death, or marriage, the newer clans created tartans of their own by adding an overstripe onto the basic pattern of the parent clan.
Nowadays, tartan has gained international popularity, with individuals selecting and sporting a design of their choosing. However the Royal tartan is reserved for the exclusive use of the British royal family.
Maasai shuka cloth closely resembles the Scottish plaid or tartan patterns and was probably brought in by Scottish missionaries when the colonial-era Mission was established in 1895.
Worn by royalty and punks alike, tartan has always evoked both the regimented traditional and the blatantly subversive throughout its history. At times endorsing true Scottish identity and often ridiculing it through contradictions like chic Chanel dresses and sculptural Donald Judd prints. Tartan’s fascinating story is as rich and complex as the textile itself, but the cloth has proved surprisingly versatile to the changing winds of politics and fashion trends, uniforms and tourist trinkets, and catwalks and clans.
Intrigued? Click on to discover the surprising history of tartan.
The surprising history of tartan
From its origins to the present day
FASHION Scotland
Worn by royalty and punks alike, tartan has always evoked both the regimented traditional and the blatantly subversive throughout its history. At times endorsing true Scottish identity and often ridiculing it through contradictions like chic Chanel dresses and sculptural Donald Judd prints. Tartan’s fascinating story is as rich and complex as the textile itself, but the cloth has proved surprisingly versatile to the changing winds of politics and fashion trends, uniforms and tourist trinkets, and catwalks and clans.
Intrigued? Click on to discover the surprising history of tartan.