Tartan

The earliest image of Scottish soldiers wearing tartan, 1631 German engraving.[9][lower-alpha 1]

Today, tartan is mostly associated with Scotland; however, the earliest evidence of tartan is found far afield from Britain. According to the textile historian E. J. W. Barber, the Hallstatt culture of Central Europe, which is linked with ancient Celtic populations and flourished between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, produced tartan-like textiles. Some of them were discovered in 2004, remarkably preserved, in the Hallstatt salt mines near Salzburg, Austria; they feature a mix of natural-coloured and dyed wool.[4] Textile analysis of fabric from the Tarim mummies (2100–1700 BC) in Xinjiang, northwestern China has also shown it to be similar to that of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture.[10] Tartan-like leggings were found on the "Cherchen Man", a 3,000 year-old mummy found in the Taklamakan Desert.[11] Similar finds have been made in central Europe and Scandinavia.[6]

The earliest documented tartan-like cloth in Britain, known as the "Falkirk tartan", dates from the 3rd century AD, and is actually closer to tweed than tartan in weaving construction.[12] It was uncovered at Falkirk in Stirlingshire, Scotland, near the Antonine Wall. The fragment, held in the National Museums of Scotland, was stuffed into the mouth of an earthenware pot containing almost 2,000 Roman coins.[13] The Falkirk tartan has a simple check design, of natural light and dark wool. Early forms of tartan like this are thought to have been invented in pre-Roman times, and would have been popular among the inhabitants of the northern Roman provinces[14][15] as well as in other parts of Northern Europe such as Jutland, where the same pattern was prevalent.[16][17][18]

There is little in the way of written or pictorial evidence about tartan (much less surviving tartan cloth) from the Medieval era. Tartan use in Scotland between the 3rd-century Falkirk tartan and 16th-century samples, writings, and art is thus unclear.[19].

John Campbell of the Bank, 1749. The present official Clan Campbell tartans are predominantly blue, green and black.[20]

The oldest surviving sample of complex, dyed-wool tartan (not just a simple chequer pattern) in Scotland has been shown through radiocarbon dating to be from the early 16th century; known as the "Glen Affric tartan", it was discovered in the 1980s in a peat bog.[21] The earliest known written reference to tartan by name is in a 1538 Exchequer accounting of clothing to be ordered for King James V of Scotland, which referred to "ane schort heland coit" ('a short Highland coat') and "heland tertan to be hoiss" ('Highland tartan to be hose').[22] By the late 16th century, there are numerous references to striped or checkered plaids. Tartan was also used as a furnishing fabric, including bed hangings at Ardstinchar Castle in 1605.[23]

Tartan and Highland dress in this era were essentially classless – they were worn in the Highlands by everyone from high-born lairds to the commonest crofters.[24] Tartan became something of an industry in the Highlands, centered on Inverness, the early business records of which are filled with many references to tartan goods.[25] Tartan patterns were loosely associated with the weavers of a particular area,[26] and it was common for Highlanders to wear whatever was available to them,[2] often a number of different tartans at the same time. In 1618, poet John Taylor wrote of tartan Highland garb in detail (in terms that generally match what was described and illustrated even two centuries later), and says that it was worn not just by locals but also by visiting British gentlemen.[lower-alpha 2]

The MacDonald Boys Playing Golf, 18th century, National Galleries Scotland

It is not until the late 17th or early 18th century that regional uniformity in tartan, sufficient to identify the area of origin, is thought to have occurred.[19] Martin Martin, in A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, published in 1703, wrote that Scottish tartans could be used to distinguish the inhabitants of different places.[lower-alpha 3] He did not mention anything like the use of a special pattern by each family.

The Treaty and Acts of Union in 1706–07, which did away with the separate Parliament of Scotland, led to Scottish Lowlanders adopting tartan in large numbers for the first time, as a symbol of protest against the union.[29] It was not just men, but even "some of Edinburgh's most influential ladies".[30]

From 1725, evidence suggests that the militia force of the Independent Highland Companies introduced a standardised tartan chosen to avoid association with a particular location or clan,[31] and this was formalised when they amalgamated to become the Black Watch regiment in 1739 (the first proper governmental Highland regiment, part of the British Army).

The most effective fighters for Jacobitism were the supporting Scottish clans, leading to an association of Highland dress with the Jacobite cause to restore the Catholic Stuart dynasty to the throne of England and Scotland. This included great kilts, and trews (trousers) with great coats, all typically of tartan cloth, as well as the blue bonnet. Highland garb formed something of a uniform, even worn by Prince Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") himself.[32]

After the failure of the Jacobite rising of 1745, efforts to pacify the Highlands led to the Dress Act 1746, banning the wearing of Highland dress by men and boys in Scotland, except for the landed gentry and the Highland regiments of the British Army.[33] Although the act, contrary to popular later belief, did not ban all tartan (or bagpipes, or Gaelic), and women, noblemen, and soldiers continued to wear tartan,[34] it nevertheless effectively severed the everyday tradition of Highland Scots wearing primarily tartan, as it imposed the wearing of Lowland, English-like clothing for two generations.[33][35] However, it may also have ironically helped to "galvanize clan consciousness" under suppression.[36]

After much outcry (as the ban applied to Jacobites and loyalists alike), the act was repealed in 1782, due to the efforts of the Highland Society of London. In the interim, traditional Highland techniques of wool spinning and dyeing, and the weaving of tartan, had sharply declined.[37] Commercial production of tartan was to become re-centered in the Lowlands, among companies like Wilson's of Bannockburn, with the rise of demand for tartan for military regimental dress.

Because the Dress Act had not applied to the military or gentry, tartan gradually had become associated with the upper class, rather than "noble savage" Highlanders, from the late 18th century and into the 19th;[38] the clans, Jacobitism, and anti-unionism (none of them any longer an actual threat of civil unrest) were increasingly viewed with a sense of nostalgia.[24] By the 1790s, some of the gentry were even helping design tartans for their own personal use, according to surviving records from Wilson's.[24]

Contemporary portraits show that although tartan is of an early date, the pattern worn depended not on the wearer's clan, but rather upon his or her place of residence, or personal taste.

David Morier's An Incident in the Rebellion of 1745. The eight featured highlanders in the painting wear over twenty different tartans.[41]

David Morier's well-known mid-18th-century painting of the Highland charge at the Battle of Culloden shows the clansmen wearing various tartans. The setts painted differ from one another and very few of those painted resemble today's clan tartans.[31] The method of identifying friend from foe was not through tartans but by the different plant sprigs worn in the cockade of the bonnet, or by the colour of the bonnet's cockade or ribbon.[lower-alpha 4][lower-alpha 5]

As early as 1689, poet James Philip seems to have described Highland troops (in the era before the formal Highland regiments) being distinguishable by a number of factors, including colours of hose, of coats, and of tartans. However, it is not clear when he was referring to the miliamen and when he was more specifically describing the bedecked lords who led them, and he does not use the term "clan tartan" or anything similar.[lower-alpha 6] A witness of the 1689 Battle of Killiecrankie describes "McDonnell's men in their triple stripes", suggesting they were wearing the same or similar, regionally-distinct tartan.

The idea of groups of men wearing the exact same tartan as an identifier is thought to originate from Scottish military units in the 18th century, starting probably with the Independent Highland Companies in 1725.[31] "[I]t was probably their use of it which gave birth to the idea of differentiating tartan by clans; for as the Highland regiments were multiplied ... so their tartan uniforms were differentiated."[40]

The Cockburn Collection of 56 tartan samples (some of them duplicates) was put together between 1810 and ca. 1815, published in 1820, by Lt.-Gen. Sir William Cockburn, and is now in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow.[39][45] Cockburn did ascribe particular family names to many of these setts (probably naming them after prominent individuals), but they rarely correspond to current clan tartan associations (indeed, some patterns that are today associated with particular clans were given multiple different names in the Cockburn Collection).[46][lower-alpha 7]

The Lowlands-based William Wilson & Sons of Bannockburn, the first large-scale commercial tartan producers,[48] founded c. 1765,[2] had become the foremost supplier of tartan to the military by around 1770, an endeavor that required the introduction of tartan recording and of standardisation of setts and dyes.[2] Wilson's corresponded with their agents in the Highlands to get information and samples of cloth from the various districts to enable them to reproduce "perfectly genuine patterns". Wilson's recorded over 200 setts in addition to ones they designed in-house, published in their 1819 catalogue, the Key Pattern Book of around 250 setts[2] (among earlier volumes). These tartans were numbered or given fanciful names, such as "Rob Roy", not associated with specific clans.[39][49] Several of the modern clan tartans, however, can be traced to this work, originally with numbers or unrelated names.[39][lower-alpha 8]

It has been suggested by a modern chief of Clan Campbell and another of the clan executives that the clan had informally adopted what is now known as old Campbell or Black Watch tartan by the early 19th century, because so many of their men were already wearing it as part of regimental uniform (three of the ten Independent Highland Companies that amalgamated into the Black Watch regiment in 1739–1751 were Campbell units). Some time in or after 1806, when he became clan chief, the city-dwelling politician George Campbell, 6th Duke of Argyll, created his own personal tartan, of Black Watch with a white line added, "to differentiate himself from the rest of the Campbells", i.e. because they were already so often wearing Black Watch.[20] This essentially may have been one of the earliest clan tartans (and the duke's variant is an early declared personal tartan of a noble).

The idea arose among Scottish expatriates, eager to "preserve" Highland culture, that tartans had traditionally been named and that the names represented clan affiliations.[2] On 8 April 1815, the Highland Society of London (founded 1778)[39] resolved that the clan chiefs each "be respectfully solicited to furnish the Society with as much of the Tartan of his Lordship's Clan as will serve to Show the Pattern and to Authenticate the Same by Attaching Thereunto a Card bearing the Impression of his Lordship's Arms." Many had no idea of what their tartan might be or whether they had one, but were keen to comply and to provide authentic signed and sealed samples; they often turned to Wilson's for a design, while some directly adopted a regimental tartan as their own.[39][2][lower-alpha 9] Alexander Macdonald, 2nd Baron Macdonald, wrote back to the society: "Being really ignorant of what is exactly The Macdonald Tartan, I request you will have the goodness to exert every Means in your power to Obtain a perfectly genuine Pattern, Such as Will Warrant me in Authenticating it with my Arms."

The 1822 visit of George IV to Scotland, in Highland garb and with a great deal of tartan-festooned public ceremony, had a profound tartan-boosting effect, including the invention of new clan-specific tartans to suit[50][39] (or renaming of old tartans to have clan names),[2] as clan chiefs had been asked to attend in clan tartans.[2] It caused a boom in the tartan-weaving business, and a broader public notion that tartans should be named for families.[39][2] A wave of highly dubious books followed, all purporting to reveal true clan histories and tartans; they presented little in the way of evidence, but they caused enthusiastic adoption of clan tartans. The first of these, in 1831, was The Scottish Gael by James Logan, which spurred some British weavers to simply invent some "clan tartans". It was followed in 1842 by Vestiarium Scoticum by the so-called Sobieski Stuarts, purporting to contain centuries-old clan tartans, illustrated in great detail but from vague textual descriptions. Although it is now known to have been a forgery, many of its visual tartan designs were nevertheless adopted and survive today as accepted clan tartans,[51] especially for Lowland clan names (which had hitherto never been associated with tartan or Highland garb at all).[39][24] This was followed soon after by The Costume of the Clans published by one of the Sobieski Stuarts in 1844.[52] (The political background and overal impact of these events on tartan in general is presented in more detail at § Georgian, below.)

Other 19th-century clan-tartan works followed.[51] Logan returned with The Clans of the Scottish Highlands in the 1840s, which (among other illustrations) had iconsistently hand-coloured portraits of chiefs in clan tartans, which he stated were "acknowledged by the present chiefs and clans".[39] The Clans of the Highlands of Scotland in 1850 by Thomas Smibert drew heavily on Logan and the Sobieski Stuarts, and in the same year Authenticated Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland by William and Andrew Smith was based on trade sources such as army clothier George Hunter's pre-1822 collection of setts.[39] J. Claude produced the tartan pattern sample book Clans Originaux in Paris c. 1880, and some tartans were adopted from it.[lower-alpha 10] Another influential one was D. W. Stewart's Old & Rare Scottish Tartans (1893), which also included swatches of fabric. Books of this era (most notably Tartans of the Clans and Septs of Scotland by James Grant in 1886, revised by Henry Whyte in 1906)[39] also introduced lists of alleged clan septs – families of different surnames supposedly linked to particular clans as "extended family". It was a means of greatly increasing tartan sales by attaching many more names to extant tartan designs, but not well-grounded in any historical reality.[54]

The romanticised notion of clan tartans became deeply embedded in the Scottish imagination and further afield.[24] On the cusp of the Scottish Renaissance and Gaelic Revival, most clans had been assigned and had generally accepted one or more tartans by the late 19th century.

The first properly scholarly book on the subject, which remains in print today, was Frank Adam's 1908 The Clans, Septs & Regiments of the Scottish Highlands.[39] A variety of books, with colour plates, had been affordably and widely published about clan tartans by the mid-20th century. Three popular ones were The Clans and Tartans of Scotland by Robert Bain, 1938; The Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland by Thomas Innes of Learney (later to become the Lord Lyon King of Arms as well as a founder of the Scottish Tartans Society); and The Scottish Clans & Their Tartans published by W. & A. K. Johnston, 1939, and based on previous works by Grant and Whyte; many others followed in successive decades.[39]

The mass-market books did much to cement the idea of clan tartans in the public imagination, as well as to consistently anchor particular tartans to particular clans. And they were in general agreement with one another. They also simultaneously increased the number of clans with their own assigned tartans, and reduced the number of tartans claimed to be those of certain clans to a more manageable number, probably after consultation with clan chiefs and clan society officers. They did, however, typically include sept lists, which today are widely regarded as bogus[54] (though many present-day clan associations still use them, as a means of attracting larger membership).

Every extant clan (with or without a chief) had at least one tartan associated with it by this era. Many clans have several well-accepted tartans. Sometimes they represent different branches of the family; e.g., there are separate tartans for Campbell of Breadalbane, Campbell of Cawdor, and Campbell of Loudoun, in addition to the general "old" Campbell tartan. In other cases, they are (at least ostensibly) for specific purposes such as hunting, mourning, formal dress occasions, or Highland dance competition; e.g., the Barclay dress and Barclay hunting tartans are different. (See § Tartans for specific purposes, below.)

An important, more scholarly work was 1950's The Setts of the Scottish Tartans by D. C. Stewart[lower-alpha 11] (son of the aforementioned D. W. Stewart).[39] The younger Stewart has been hailed as "the founder of serious tartan research"; originated now-standard methods for indexing tartans; and would go on to help expose the Vestiarium Scoticum as a fraud, in Scotland's Forged Tartans, co-authored with J. Charles Thompson in 1980.[39]

In the late 20th century to present, clan and other tartans also have been catalogued in databases. (See § Registration, below.) A small number of new clan tartans (specific-purpose "side" tartans, like dance tartans) were registered in tartan databases in the 21st century.[55]

The "officialness" of clan tartans has varied widely, and still does today. Although it is possible for anyone to create a tartan and assign it any name they wish, the only person with the authority to make a clan's tartan "official" is the chief.[39]

Some clans have had no chiefs for some time, while only a majority subset of those with living chiefs in the modern era have made direct proclamations as to their clan tartans and registered them with the Lord Lyon.[lower-alpha 12] (See § Registration, below.) Some of the clan tartans were simply adopted by custom, and have remained rather consistent into the 21st century. A clan booth at a Highland games event is likely to proudly display at least their best-known clan tartan, regardless whether a chief has declared it official.

However, some chiefs have been quite adamant about what their clan's legitimate tartans are. Ian Campbell, 12th Duke of Argyll, chief of Clan Campbell in the late 20th century, excoriated attempts to claim there were other than the four aforementioned particular Campbell tartans (and specifically rejected the personal-variant tartan of the 6th Duke).[20] Similarly, Sir Malcolm MacGregor, modern chief of Clan Gregor, has written that only four MacGregor tartans (plus a newer dance tartan) are legitimate, out of 10 or more alleged ones found in a tartan database, which he blamed on "indiscriminate commercialisation ... disingenuous and lead[ing] to confusion".[57]

In at least one instance, a clan tartan appears in the coat of arms of a clan chief and is considered by the Lord Lyon as the "proper" tartan of the clan.[lower-alpha 13]

Wilkie's idealised depiction of George IV, in full Highland dress, during the visit to Scotland in 1822[lower-alpha 14]

While tartan had already seen more nationwide use from 1707, as a Scottish nationalism symbol against union with England,[29] it was turned on its ear to become a symbol of union loyalism in the early 19th century.[24] The popularity of tartan was greatly increased by the royal visit of King George IV to Edinburgh in 1822, in Highland garb. He was the first reigning monarch to visit Scotland in 171 years.[50] The pageantry invented for the event, which was nicknamed "the King's Jaunt", brought a sudden demand for tartan cloth and made it the national dress of the whole of Scotland.[50] The festivities were originated by the staunchly loyalist[24] Walter Scott, who founded the Celtic Society of Edinburgh in 1820. Scott and his society urged Scots (most of whom were Lowlanders) to attend "all plaided and plumed in their tartan array".[60] One contemporary writer sarcastically described the pomp that surrounded the celebrations as "Sir Walter's Celtified Pagentry".[60][61]

Following the royal visit, books which documented tartans added to the "tartanry" craze. James Logan's romanticised work The Scottish Gael (1831) was the first such publication, and led the weaving industry to invent new tartans.[52]

The first publication showing colour plates of tartans was the Vestiarium Scoticum (meaning 'wardrobe of the Scots'), published in 1842.[51] It was the work of two brothers: John Carter Allen and Charles Manning Allen, from Surrey, England, who used a variety of assumed names. The two claimed to be grandsons of Prince Charles Edward Stuart and his wife Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, and consequently later became known as the "Sobieski Stuarts". They claimed further that the Vestiarium was based on a 1571 manuscript on clan tartans – a manuscript which they never managed to produce.[62][39] The Vestiarium was followed by the equally dubious The Costume of the Clans two years later by John Sobieski.[52]

The result of this flurry of attention has been described as "inciting a rush to lay claim to the tartan to which one's family was 'entited'".[63] The romantic enthusiasm that Logan and the Sobieski Stuarts generated with their publications led the way for more tartan books in the 19th century.[60][51]

Twenty years after her uncle's visit to Scotland, Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert made their first trip to the Scottish Highlands. They bought Balmoral Castle in 1848 and hired a local architect to re-model the estate in "Scots baronial" style. Prince Albert personally took care of the interior design, where he made great use of tartan. He used the royal Stewart (red) and the hunting Stewart (green) tartans for carpets, while using the dress Stewart (red and white) for curtains and upholstery. The Queen designed the Victoria tartan, and Prince Albert the Balmoral tartan, still used as a royal tartan today.[64] (See illustration at § Family, below.) The couple even decorated their carriage with tartan.[65]

Victoria and Albert spent a considerable amount of time at their Scottish estate,[lower-alpha 15] and in doing so hosted "Highland" activities. Victoria was attended by pipers, and her children were attired in Highland dress. Prince Albert himself loved watching the Highland games;[67] the couple also became patrons of the Braemar Gathering. The royal ethusiasm for and patronage of Highland things generated a lot of early tourism to the Highlands.[68] It also spread tartan-wearing to other northern British lords and ladies, who began to invent complicated etiquette rules of dress for Highland garb, which had the effect of increasing the sense that it was upper-class attire.[24] (See § Etiquette, below.)

As the tartan and "romantic Highlands" craze swept over Scotland, the actual Highland population suffered grievously from the Highland Clearances, when thousands of Gaelic-speaking Scots from the Highlands and Isles were evicted by landlords (often the very men who would have been their clan chiefs) to make way for sheep.[60]

The first permanent colour photograph, by Thomas Sutton in 1861, was of a tartan ribbon.

The world's first permanent colour photograph, taken by Thomas Sutton (using the three-colour process developed by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell) in 1861, was of a tartan ribbon.[69] It was created by using red, blue, and yellow filters to create three photographs which were then combined into a composite.

Victorian entrepreneurs not only created new tartans, but new tartan objects called tartanware. Tartan decorated an assortment of common household objects, such as snuffboxes, jewellery cases, tableware, sewing accessories, desk items, and even furniture. Tourists visiting the Highlands went home with tartanware, and Scotland-based businesses sent tartanware out as gifts to customers. Some of the more popular tartans used were the Stewart, MacDonald, McGregor, McDuff, MacBeth, and Prince Charlie.[70] Today, tartanware is widely collected in England and Scotland.[71]

In the Victorian era, tartan-clad garments for women as well as men began to be featured in fashion catalogues.[72] In the United States, tartan was often worked into school uniforms, especially at Catholic schools.[73]

Founded in 1898, Walker's Shortbread has long been sold in royal Stewart tartan packaging around the world (especially during Christmas and Hogmanay festivities).[74]

By the Edwardian era, tartan had shifted from being mainly a component of men's clothing to become an important part of women's fashion, including fanciful haute couture designs from Paris that had no connection to Highland style.[72] Edward VIII himself was a life-long devotee of tartan, often wearing more than one at a time.[72] In consequence of its associations with the British aristocracy, Scottish clans, and Highland military, tartan developed an air of dignity and exclusivity.[75] Because of this, tartan was to make periodic resurgences in the world of fashion.

Tartan patterns (often simple, unnamed ones) remained commonly used for skirts and jumper dresses (pinafore dresses) in Catholic and other private school uniform codes in North America and also in public and private schools in New Zealand. The style spread to many other places, including South America and Japan and Hong Kong.

By the mid-20th century, annual Highland games events, modelled on the traditional events in Scotland, had been established throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia, among other places with a notable Scottish diaspora. (The earliest such events in North America go back quite a ways, to 1836 in New York and 1863 in Nova Scotia.) The modern, rather commercialized gatherings have done much to promote tartan (and kilts) abroad, having up to tens of thousands of attendees, a large proportion of them in tartan Highland dress. The games are the primary source of business for a cottage industry of professional kiltmakers outside of Scotland.

A German punk wearing a piece of the royal Stewart tartan, 1984

Tartan suits were popular in the mod subculture of Great Britain of the early to mid-1960s and its late 1970s revival. Tartan then became a common element of punk subculture. In the late 1970s, punk music was a way for youth in the British Isles to voice their discontent with the ruling class and with modern society. The unorthodox use of tartan (especially the royal Stewart), which had long been associated with authority and gentility, was then seen as an expression of that discontent. In this way, tartan – worn unconventionally – became an anti-establishment symbol. This was entirely on purpose according to Vivienne Westwood, a designer deeply involved in early punk fashion.[75][76] American punks often wore tartan skirts, a "subversion" of the Catholic school-girl uniform, and kilts have also been worn in the punk scene since around the 1980s, especially in the UK. Baggy tartan pants later proved popular among pop-punks and skate punks, and tartan-lined jackets among ska punks. (For further information, see Punk fashion.) From the late 1990s, kilts (mostly modernised "utility kilts" but sometimes traditional ones) have become relatively popular even in North American post-punk subculture (e.g. the goth–industrial, emo, and steampunk scenes), though often in black rather than tartan.

After the 1970s, Westwood, who continued to work extenstively with tartan, was joined by other big-name couturiers. These included Ralph Lauren, whose designs promoted tartan as a mainstream modern clothing option for both women and men;[77] and later Alexander McQueen, who was "consciously repoliticising the cloth".[35] A tartan outfit designed by Westwood featured on a commemorative UK postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail in 2012 celebrating "Great British Fashion".[78]

Tartan Day, an annual symbolic ethnicity holiday among the Scottish diaspora, was first declared in Nova Scotia in 1987 and was essentially nation-wide in Canada by the 1990s. It has since spread to Australia (with varying levels of official recognition, 1989–1996), the US (1998), and other places including New Zealand and even Argentina.

Major commercial weavers (woolen mills) of traditional tartan cloth that are operating today include Lochcarron of Scotland (who date back to the era of George V)[77] in Lochcarron and Selkirk; Ingles Buchan in Glasgow; House of Edgar (who are also a Highland dress vendor) in Perth; Johnstons of Elgin (who are also a wool clothing maker); Strathmore Woolen in Forfar;[39] DC Dalgliesh in Selkirk;[48] The Tartan Weaving Mill in Edinburgh; Marton Mills in West Yorkshire, England; and GK Textiles (formerly Fraser & Kirkbright) in Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada.

(For particular 20th-century to present-day tartans, see also § Corporate and commercial and § Fashion, below.)

In 1947, the tartan-laden Broadway musical Brigadoon (followed by a film version in 1954 and a television adaptation in 1966) renewed an excessively romanticised notion of the Highlands and Highland dress. A critical review called it a "whimsical dream-world" that was "overloaded with Hollywood-Scottish trappings".[79] (The production is generally not well received by actual Scots.)[80]

Since the 1970s, the fandom of the Scotland national football (soccer) team have been collectively referred to by the nickname "Tartan Army", with fans often sporting one or more articles of tartan clothing at matches.

Popular in the mid-1970s, the Scottish teeny-bopper band the Bay City Rollers were described by the British Hit Singles & Albums reference book as "tartan teen sensations from Edinburgh".[81]

A resurgence of interest in tartan and kilts has been generated in recent times by major Hollywood productions like Braveheart (1995), Rob Roy (1995), Brave (2012), and the television series Outlander (2014–).

Tartan clothing has appeared frequently in Doctor Who. The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) wore a Wallace tartan scarf on Terror of the Zygons,[82] and the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) wore a crimson and black tartan scarf on Time and the Rani. Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman), the companion for the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) and the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi), wore a Campbell tartan dress on The Name of the Doctor and a Wallace skirt on The Time of the Doctor and Deep Breath.[83] The Fourteenth Doctor (David Tennant) wears a tartan brown suit and navy overcoat in the 60th anniversary specials.[84]

The brighter of the MacLeod tartans, known affectionately as the "loud MacLeod", in the saturated modern palette.

The hues of colour in tartan can be altered to produce variations of the same tartan. The resulting colour schemes or palettes are divided into modern, ancient, muted, and weathered (sometimes with other names, depending on weaver). These terms only refer to dye colours and do not represent distinct tartans.[37][48] In the mid-19th century, the natural dyes (like indigo, woad, and cochineal) that had been traditionally used[86] began to be replaced by artificial dyes, which were easier to use and were more economic for the booming tartan industry. Artificial dyes tend to produce very strong, vivid colours compared to natural dyes; the more saturated palette was favoured in Victorian aesthetics. All commercially manufactured tartan today is coloured using artificial not natural dyes, even in the less saturated schemes.[89][90]

Modern

Refers to darker tartan, with fully saturated colours.[90][48] In a modern palette, setts made up of blue, black, and green tend to be obscured because of the darkness of the colours in this scheme.[90]

Ancient

Also known as old colours (OC); refers to a lighter palette of tartan. These hues are ostensibly meant to represent the colours that would result from natural-dyed fabric aging over time. However, the results are not accurate (e.g., in real examples of very old tartan, black often fades toward khaki while blue remains dark;[90] and natural dyes are capable of producing some very vibrant colours in the first place, though not very consistently[48]). This style dates to some time after World War II.[48] This ancient is not to be confused with the same word in a few names of tartans such as "ancient Campbell".

Weathered

Also called reproduction;[37] refers to tartan that is even lighter (less saturated) than ancient, as if exposed for a very long time.[48]

Muted

Refers to tartan which is between modern and ancient in vibrancy. Although this type of colouring is very recent, dating only from the early 1970s, these hues are thought to be the closest match to the colours attained by natural dyes used before the mid-19th century. This palette may be exclusive to the weaver House of Edgar.[48]

A general observation about ancient/old and muted are that they rather uniformly reduce the saturation of all colours, while actual natural-dyed tartan samples show that the historical practice was usually to pair one or more saturated colours with one or more pale ones, for greater clarity and depth.[48][37]

Some particular tartan mills have introduced other color schemes (e.g. Lochcarron's antique) that are unique to that weaver and only available in certain tartans.[48]

The same tartan in the same palette from two manufacturers (e.g. Colquhoun ancient/old from DC Dalgliesh and from Strathmore) will not precisely match; there is considerable artistic license involved in exactly how saturated to make a hue.[90]

From around the 1990s onward, the once-unusual paler palettes have become increasingly popular for kilts because of their more understated appearance, and there has been an upsurge in brown kilt belts, sporrans, and brogues that go well with the faded look (the more traditional style for such accessories is black).

The idea that the various colours used in tartan have a specific meaning is purely a modern one, notwithstanding a myth that red tartans were "battle tartans", designed so they would not show blood. It is only recently created tartans, such as Canadian provincial and territorial tartans (beginning 1950s) and US state tartans (beginning 1980s), that are designed with certain symbolic meaning for the colours used. For example, green sometimes represents prairies or forests, blue can represent lakes and rivers, and yellow might stand for various crops.[91] There is no set of tartan colour or pattern "motifs" with allusive meanings that is shared among designers.

Many districts, cities, and towns in Scotland have their own tartans, mostly dating to the 20th century and not always official. They are intended primarily for those to whom a clan tartan does not seem to apply (see § Etiquette, below). At least two local government councils in Scotland have official tartans.[95]

In addition to the original Scottish regional tartans and modern district tartans, new tartans have been created for regions outside of Scotland. Many regional tartans are officially recognised by government bodies.

Created from 1963 to the 1980s, there are official "national" (in the sense of Celtic nations) tartans of Cornwall, long a part of Devonshire, England.

All but two Canadian provinces and territories have official tartans, with the first dating from 1956. Neither Quebec nor Nunavut, Canada's newest territory, have enshrined their tartans in law. Alberta, meanwhile, has two official tartans, including a dress tartan. All but Quebec's are registered with the Court of the Lord Lyon in Scotland.[96] Canada has an official national tartan that was originally designed to commemorate the introduction of its new maple leaf flag, and was made an official national emblem in 2011.[97] Various Canadian regions (like Labrador and Cape Breton Island), counties, municipalities, and institutions also have official tartans.[lower-alpha 18]

US states have official tartans, with the first dating from 1988. Other tartans have been created for Australia; its capital city, Canberra; each of its states; and some of its local government areas; but only some of those tartans have been officially adopted or recognised by the relevant governments in Australia.

Highland dancing, at a 2008 Highland games event, in dance tartans that feature a lot of white

A tartan is sometimes differentiated from another with the same name by a label: hunting, mourning, dress, or dance.

Hunting tartans seem to be a Victorian conception, although there is some evidence of early tartans with camouflage colours,[lower-alpha 19] going back to the 16th century.[101] These tartans tend to be made up of subdued colours, such as dark blues and greens. Despite the name, hunting tartans have very little to do with actual hunting.[7]

Mourning tartans, though quite rare, are associated with death and funerals. They are usually designed using combinations of black and white, or by replacing bright colours such as reds and yellows in a traditional tartan with black, white, or grey.[102]

Dress tartans are sometimes special tartans for formal-dress occasions (e.g. dress Stewart[103] is distinct from both the main royal Stewart tartan and the hunting Stewart, [104] among several other tartans attributed to Stewart/Stuart). In other cases, a dress tartan is simply the main tartan of the clan (e.g. Barclay dress is also known simply as Barclay, and is distinguished only from a Barclay hunting tartan). Dress tartans that do differ from main clan tartans are sometimes entirely different, while in some cases they are based on the main tartan but with colour differences (e.g. both Stewart and Barclay). Some dress tartans are very modern, but some date back to the era of the Vestiarium Scoticum.

Dance tartans, intended for Highland dance outfits, for either sex, are inspired (like some dress tartans before them) by the earasaid tartans worn by Highland women in the 17th and 18th centuries,[lower-alpha 20] which often featured white as a major colour, as do typical dance tartans today (most or all of which date to the 20th century or later).

There has been some confusion between dress and dance tartans, especially since the idea of the latter developed from the former.[lower-alpha 21] Some dress tartans, including some of the oldest, also have white in them, and have been used for dancing in lieu of a dance-specific tartan, so are easy to mistake for dance tartans, which almost invariably have white in them.[106] The white-heavy MacGregor dance tartan (in three colour variants dating to 1975–2005) is confusingly listed in the Scottish Register of Tartans as both dance and dress,[107] but the chief of Clan Gregor insists it is for dancers only,[57] so it is demonstrably not a general dress-wear tartan.[lower-alpha 22]

The British royal family's own Balmoral tartan (established 1853)

A large proportion of non-clan tartans in all of the modern tartan databases have always been family tartans, promulgated mostly from the late 20th century for family names that are not clans or listed as septs of clans. These are usually Scottish surnames, but the Scottish Register of Tartans (SRT) database increasingly includes new family tartans for names that are not Scottish or even British. Most family tartans have no copyright claim, since they are intended for use by anyone with the surname or an extended-family connection. The SRT classifies them together with clan tartans in a "clan/family" category.

A few non-clan family tartans have an older pedigree. The best known and probably oldest is Balmoral tartan, reserved for the British royal family and personal pipers thereof, since its creation by Prince Albert in 1853.[108] (See also further discussion under § Etiquette, below.) Balmoral is incidentally one of the few long-established tartans that uses multiple hues of the same colour (two shades of grey, in this case).

For the much narrower sense of "family", the SRT also registers as "individual" tartans those that are created by individuals for only themselves and their immediate-family members, often for weddings; these usually have a copyright claim.

Numerous Scottish brands use tartan, and some have unique tartans. Various not-for-profit organisations also have corporate tartans. Probably the earliest case was that of the Ancient Caledonian Society of London (founded in 1786 and now long defunct), which used what is believed to have been a consistent tartan[109] for its members' dress coats (which, unusually, featured embroidery over the tartan), one of which survives in the National Museum of Scotland.[110]

Scottish airline Loganair in its tartan livery

As an example of a modern commercial tartan, Irn-Bru (introduced in 1901), the best-selling soft drink in Scotland, has its own tartan.[111] Scottish regional airline Loganair uses tartan livery, including on the tails of its planes, and has two registered corporate tartans.[112]

The "corporate" category is one of the fastest-growing in the official Scottish Register of Tartans database, with a large number of Scottish (and American and other) companies and societies registering organisational tartans. (See § Registration, below.) These are generally protected by trademark and (at least in theory) copyright law. These tartans vary in purpose from general corporate livery, to special event tartans, to tartans for fictional characters.

Two examples of the latter are Sanrio's 2004 creation of a predominantly pink tartan for Hello Kitty;[113] and the 2011 creation by Disney/Pixar of the DunBroch tartan for the family of the main character, Merida, of the animated Highland fantasy/adventure film Brave.[114]

Burberry check

An early example of a tartan created by and for the fashion industry, and surely the most famous, is "Burberry check". It was introduced in the 1920s for the lining of trench coats made by Burberry of London, but has been used for all manner of clothing and accessories since 1967[115] (with another major marketing push in 2001) and is emblematic of the company and its upscale product line.[116] (For additional information, including a legal dispute, see § Etiquette, below.)

A fast-growing category in the Scottish Register of Tartans (SRT) is that of "fashion" tartans, created by companies and individual designers simply for aesthetic reasons, without any association to a particular clan, family, region, etc. Like organisational tartans, most of these have a copyright claim attached to them.

A prominent example: In 2017, Scottish fashion designer Charles Jeffrey designed a signature tartan for his Loverboy label, registering it in the SRT.[117]

Woodcut image of Japanese kabuki actor Iwai Hanshiro IV dressed in kōshi, 1780s

In Japan, tartan patterns called kōshi 格子 (also koushi or goushi, literally 'lattice') or kōshijima 格子縞 date back to at least the Edo period (1603–1867), and were popular for kabuki theatrical costuming, which inspired general public use by both sexes, for the kosode (precursor of the kimono), the obi, and other garments.[143] The name is a reference to the details of shoji room dividers, the grid pattern said to stand for strength, with larger stripes representing more power.[143]

Kōshi range from simple chequer patterns to complex multi-colour weaves. Ikat thread-dyeing techniques were sometimes employed before the weaving, such that a colour in the pattern was mottled.[143] Some styles have particular names, such as misuji-kōshi ('three-striped lattice')[143] and futasuji-kōshi ('forked lattice').[144] A pattern with larger squares is more generally called ogoshi or with smaller squares kogoshi.[145]

It is unclear whether there was a Scottish tartan influence on the development of kōshi. The Edo period pre-dates the Perry Expedition of 1853–1854 and its opening of Japan to general Western trade, but post-dates early European contact from 1543 to the closure of Japan to outsiders in 1639 under the sakoku isolationist policy.

Nothing suggests that particular patterns have been associated with specific families or Japanese clans.

Today, kōshijima is the general Japanese word for 'tartan/plaid, chequed pattern'.[146] Tartan is popular in present-day Japan, both for high-fashion and for streetwear, and Japan actually hosted a major museum exhibit about tartan before Scotland did.[35]

• Argyle (pattern)
• Border tartan
• Check (pattern) or chequer
• Gingham
• Houndstooth
• Sillitoe tartan, a chequered pattern properly known as dicing. Introduced by Percy Sillitoe for the police in Scotland in 1932, it spread to law enforcement in the rest of the UK and overseas.