Highland dress: what it covers and who sets the rules

Highland dress is the traditional dress of the Highlands and Isles of Scotland, usually built around tartan and, for men, a kilt or trews. That is the definition in Wikipedia’s article on the subject, and it is a looser one than most shop pages suggest. The article describes the garments as a set that may include particular shirts, jackets, bodices and headwear. It does not describe a fixed uniform. The detailed rules people quote, such as which jacket goes with which tie, are conventions with a recent history, and no single body enforces them.

This page is the overview: what the term covers, how the men’s and women’s outfits differ, where the codes came from and who, if anyone, has authority over them. The step-by-step outfit is in how to wear a kilt, and the garment itself is in what is a kilt.

What the term covers

Wikipedia’s article treats Highland dress as two outfits that share a cloth. The men’s core is a kilt or trews, usually in tartan, with a shirt, jacket, hose, sporran and other accessories. The women’s outfit is described differently, as an ankle-length tartan skirt with a coordinated blouse and vest, to which an earasaid, sash or smaller shawl may be added and fastened with a brooch.

Three further uses of the phrase turn up, and each belongs to a different setting:

• Formal and day wear. The article organises the men’s outfit by occasion: day dress at two levels of formality and evening dress at two. The same jacket names recur across makers and clan guides.
• Competition dress. Highland dancers wear dress set by their governing body, which is a specification for one activity and not a statement of what Highland dress is.
• Regimental dress. The article says the Prince Charlie, Sheriffmuir and regulation jackets derive from Victorian military doublets of Highland regiments. Regimental dress itself follows regimental rules that this site does not cover.

The word “Highland” is not a legal or geographic test. The sources read here define the dress by its tradition, and none of them says it may be worn only by people from the Highlands.

Men’s and women’s outfits side by side

The two columns are not mirror images. Men’s dress has a long list of named parts, each with a settled formality level in the guides read for this page. The women’s outfit has far fewer documented rules, and where a rule exists it usually comes from an event body or a clan society and not from a general code.

Where the formal codes come from

Wikipedia’s article states that proper formal and semi-formal Highland dress was codified in the Victorian era. It quotes the historian Hugh Cheape (2012) for the view that strict rules came to be fixed in books and tailors’ patterns from the late nineteenth century, which makes them a relatively recent construction. That is one historian’s view as quoted in a tertiary source, and the same article carries two warning tags: one asking for more citations and one disputing the factual accuracy of its modern-dress section. Treat the modern details there as a starting point, not a ruling.

The National Library of Scotland’s page on Scottish traditional culture gives the wider picture in fewer words. It says there is no clear evidence of clan tartans before the mid-eighteenth century, and it links the gap in early evidence to an eighteenth-century ban on Highland dress. It adds that early illustrations suggest tartan colours were largely a matter of personal choice and depended on locally available dyes. It dates the system linking tartans to surnames to the nineteenth century, after the surge of interest that followed George IV’s visit to Scotland, which Walter Scott helped to arrange.

The ban is documented separately. The History of Parliament Trust describes the Dress Act of 1746, passed after Culloden, which barred men and boys in Scotland from Highland dress, with an exemption for those serving in the King’s forces, and its repeal in 1782. The ban lasted 36 years, from 1746 to 1782, and the formal codes were set down later, in the Victorian period according to the article above. That is why a rule that sounds ancient may be only a few generations old, and why two reputable makers can give different answers.

Earlier descriptions exist, and Wikipedia cites several: John Taylor on dress at Braemar in 1618, Thomas Morer on belted plaids in 1689 and Martin Martin on the women’s earasaid in a work published in 1703. They show what some Highlanders wore. They do not set a code, and none of them describes day dress, black tie or white tie.

Who actually sets the rules

This is the question people most often ask, and the sources give a consistent answer: there is no single authority, and the bodies that look like authorities say so themselves.

Two points in the table deserve a closer look.

The Lord Lyon. The Lyon Court regulates heraldry. The American Clan Gregor Society’s article “Women Wear the Sash” and a genealogical society’s article on tartans both say the Lord Lyon’s web site states that there are no strict rules on wearing tartan and that the Lord Lyon has no jurisdiction over it. We read the Court’s own FAQ page and it does not mention tartan, so that wording rests on those two articles alone. The practical reading, that no official can tell you what you may wear, matches what the Register of Tartans says about its own role.

The Register of Tartans. It is run by National Records of Scotland. Its restrictions page says a registrant may record who may wear a tartan, such as immediate family, a regiment or a corporate body, and that the Keeper does not enforce those wishes. A restriction is therefore a declared request by the tartan’s owner. Which tartans carry one is covered in who can wear which tartan.

Women’s dress and the kilt question

The sources disagree here, and the disagreement is about setting, not about facts. Wikipedia says women and girls traditionally do not wear kilts and wear an ankle-length skirt instead. The dress rules of the Scottish Official Board of Highland Dancing, as mirrored on scottishdance.net, require female competitors in the usual outfits to wear a kilt, while the national dances use a gathered tartan skirt, a plaid and a sash. Wikipedia’s article on the Aboyne dress says the Aboyne Highland Games committee barred women from wearing kilts from about 1949 and introduced an alternative dress in the early 1950s.

These are three different rules for three different settings, and none of them is a general rule. The longer treatment, including the arisaid and the shoulder on which the sash is worn, is on the women’s kilts page. One thing to take from this page: if you are dressing for a dance competition, read that body’s current rules; if you are dressing for a clan event, ask the society; if you are dressing for a wedding, ask the family.

How formal the outfit should be

Wikipedia’s article sorts men’s dress by formality, not by region. Day dress comes in formal and semi-formal levels, and evening dress in white-tie and black-tie levels, and the jacket is the piece that sets the level. Clan societies add detail on top. One clan society’s guide matches jacket, hose, flashes, sporran, belt and shoes to each occasion, and another gives separate advice on kilt weight for day and evening wear. The Wikipedia article is open about the disputed ground: it says there is some contention over whether certain doublets suit black tie, and it hedges its statements on brown shoes and off-white hose.

The sensible reading is that the matching of parts is a convention, and that the event or the host is the real authority. How to wear a kilt sets the parts out in order.

Questions and answers

Is Highland dress the same as a kilt? No. The kilt is the central garment of the men’s outfit, but the term covers the whole set of garments, and for women the outfit centres on a skirt or, in some settings, a kilted skirt. The garment is described on the kilts page.

Is there an official rulebook? The sources read describe none. Different bodies publish dress rules for their own members or competitors, and the formal conventions are mostly Victorian in origin according to the historian quoted by Wikipedia.

Can anyone wear Highland dress? Nothing read for this page restricts it by birth or place. A tartan owner may record a wish about who wears a particular tartan, and the Register does not enforce it. Many people choose tartan for looks, according to Wikipedia, and not for clan affiliation.

Does the clan matter? Only for the choice of tartan, and only by custom. The National Library of Scotland says the surname-tartan system developed in the nineteenth century, and that not every surname has a tartan, so people also wear a mother’s name or a district tartan. The tartan finder and the page on family tartans cover that.