How Things Make People

Category: Clothing, Culture, Fashion

Last Updated: 16 Feb 2023

Pages: 2 Views: 168

I chose to discuss the reading by Trevor-Roper, 'The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland.' In this reading, the objects that reinforce ideas about social structure or social roles pertain primarily to items of clothing, such as kilts, breeches and shoes. In the sixteenth century, there were writings that noted that the Highlanders had specific modes of dress that were attributed to different classes, which gave reference to their social structure and roles in society. The Highlanders wore a 'long 'Irish' shirt' (which was dyed with saffron for the higher Irish classes), and tunic, and a multicolored cloak or plaid for the higher classes, and brown for everyone else. In addition, working-class Highlanders wore single-soled shoes, while the upper class wore buskins, and the Highlanders also wore soft, flat blue caps.

These color variations and different variations such as shoes would reinforce social structure due to being able to tell who was higher class. There was also different uniforms for battle; the chain mail was reserved for the leaders, while the less protective 'padded linen shirt painted or daubed with pitch and covered with dear skins' was for the lower classes. This distinction in uniform showed how much more the leaders were protected since chain mail was more resilient than deerskin during an attack. In other leadership roles, the chieftains and men who communicated with the Lowlands wore trews (breeches and stockings combination). This is significant because it showed the importance of these men in society not only by appearances but by the fact that when men wore the trews outside in the Highlands, attendants had to carry or protect them and this was considered a 'mark of social distinction'.

By the seventeenth century, Highland clothing changed, but not the social distinctions. The Lowland coat replaced the long shirt, and officers in the Highland armies wore trews and the lower class men had bare legs and thighs. By the eighteenth century, the kilt, or Highland dress, was worn as a way of life and inexpensive even for the poor to wear (p.20). The interesting piece of history that the reading conveys is that the kilt is not ancient as most would believe, but more modern and helped the Scots transition from tradition to a more modern way of life. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Highland way of the dress was banned, including the kilt, and did not come back to life for thirty-five years. The Celtic peasants that had been used to wearing the Highland clothes no longer wanted to wear a belted plaid or tartan, and chose Saxon trousers instead. Upper and middle class though wanted to wear the kilt and so another social role was formed via the wearing of the Highland dress, and eventually the Lancashire kilt

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