Good plaid

Since I talked about plaid-gone-bad on Friday, today we need to talk about the good kind, an example of which is shown on the right and many more examples of which will be shown below.

Before I get started with the good plaid, my Canadian friend Alison wants me to remind you: “Tartan is a pattern. A plaid is an article of clothing. There is no such thing as plaid pants.”  Yes, Alison is correct. Originally, plaid was the cloth worn over the shoulder by men wearing kilts. Example:

Hmmm… perhaps I haven’t been clear enough. Here are other examples to help illustrate my point:

While plaid originally meant the article of clothing, in the U.S., plaid can also refer to the pattern and is often used interchangeably with tartan.

(Also, if you look at the word plaid enough, it starts look like it’s spelled wrong.)

Here are some examples of good tartan:

Luckily, my friend Jen has shared further information about tartans. She is eminently qualified, as even though she lives in the U.K., she was born and raised north of Hadrian’s Wall. In other words, she’s from Scotland.

As a native Glaswegian, Jen knows a lot about tartan. The men in her family wear the MacKenzie tartan, shown here:

Here’s what Jen had to say about it:

In our family, the men always wear tartan at weddings and occasionally at formal dinners too. Not just the men, any male in the family – right down to my then-one-year-old son at my brother’s wedding, who wore his kilt over his nappy as he crawled around the church, the kilt even came with a wee sporran!

You know how the Scots are known to be somewhat parsimonious? Never more so when it comes to the fairly widespread, but certainly within my family, tradition of giving a man a full kilt on his 21st birthday. That way, for the rest of his life, he’ll never again need to buy an outfit for a formal event – his kilt has adjustable straps on the waist so as he widens over the years, the outfit widens with him. Just think of the suits he might have worn out over the years or outgrown.

In my family, until you are 21 you hire the kilt, because you are still growing, then for your birthday the parents give the kilt, and the rest of the family buys the rest: the shirt, the tie, the jacket, the sporran, the socks, flashes for the socks, the belt, the shoes and the dirk (the wee dagger that goes in the sock). If there’s anything left over, then a small whisky flask for the sporran! With one brother, I helped to buy his sporran, he wanted a really flash one. With the other, I bought the belt buckle.

Here are Jen’s brothers D and A, and you can see the subtle differences in their outfits:

Of course, it is up to the man if he wants one. My brothers were raised and live in Scotland so they did want one, my cousin has Scottish parents but has been brought up in England yet did still want the full kit and wears it just as often as my brothers.

The tradition may die out here on my side however. Though my son has a Scots name, he was born and brought up in England, with just one Scottish parent, and probably feels less attached to his heritage. He did wear a kilt to both my brothers’ weddings: to the first when he was just turned one he just had the kilt and a shirt, but when my other brother married, he was four and we hired almost a whole outfit – shirt, kilt, belt, socks, flashes and shoes. He looked such a smart wee man among all the other men in kilts!

Here’s Jen’s son at his uncle’s wedding several years ago:

But whether he’ll go for this as his 21st present? Not sure! He went to my cousin’s wedding two years ago and wanted to wear a shirt and tie to be like his English daddy. So it’ll be his call, he’s got nearly 13 years to decide!

I love that family tradition and I would totally love to be at a wedding where the men are all kilted-up.

(Since I know someone will ask, I’ve already done it for you: What about the women in Jen’s family, what do they get on their 21st birthdays? The parents give a gold watch and the grandparents give a gold bracelet.)

My father’s family is originally from Scotland too and our tartan is MacDonald, of which there are numerous variations, including these two:

The top tartan is the ancient version and the bottom one is the modern.

My friend Amy is a McDonald living in New Zealand. Supposedly, all the McDonalds and MacDonalds in the world are related, so she and I joke about being 14th cousins. When she got married last year, she asked her “bridesmate” to represent the clan. With her permission, I share a photo here:

From what I can tell, it appears that he’s wearing a version of the MacDonald tartan with more red in it. Doesn’t he look dashing? I’ve seen other photos and he also had a black coat for the ceremony.

So my point today is to show you that plaid/tartan can indeed look good, particularly if it is in the form of a kilt. It does not matter if a man is old or young, tall or short, thin or not thin, if he’s wearing a kilt, he looks damn fine indeed. I’d love it if I could talk Pete into getting one, but have not been successful thus far.

Beyond that, tartan on men is clearly a matter of taste, as the comments on Friday’s post showed. While I personally don’t care for tartan trousers, others were more open-minded. I don’t mind tartan ties either; however, I’m feeling a bit mixed on suspenders, vests/waistcoats, and formalwear. I guess, as so many people commented, smaller doses of tartan are good, while larger splashes of it are iffy. I’ve wanted a MacDonald tartan wrap for years but haven’t pulled the trigger, partly because of the cost but also because I’m not 100% certain that all that yards of plaid look very good on short round Anglophiles.

So that concludes our visual research into tartans. I hope this has been helpful.

 Photo credits: Yahoo Images for all but the photos from my friends.