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national kilt styles England Highland kilt outfit prevalencer
Figure 1.--This cabinet card portrait shows four unidentified children wering Highland kilt outfits, They look to be about 4-15 years old. They wear full Highland outfits with Glengarrys, military jcket, plaid, kilts, sporrans, and knee socks. We think the children are three boys and a girl. The child at right we are not sure about, but think he is a boy. The outfits are identical except for the collrs and shoes. The boys have Eton collas, the girl a lce collar. The two oldr boys wear buckle shoes while the girl and the younger boy wear strap shoes. This appears to be an age matter rather than gender. We do not know why these English children are wearing Highland kilts. We suspect it is both a fashion and political statement by their parents. The kilt was a male garment. We rarely see girls wearing them, except as in this case when all the children were dressed identically. The portrait is undated, but the cabinet card mount suggess the 1890s. The studio was R. Lang.Sims in London.
Highland Kilts: Prevalence in England
The kilt of course was a Scottish garment, but we see English boys sometimes wearing Scottish tartan kilts. There were various reasons for this, but unfortunately it is not normally apparent with just the photographs. There are several possibilities. Some of the boys photographed in England wearing kilt outfits may have been from Scotland. It could be a Scottish family living or traveling in England. They could have been visiting England or their parents living in England. But surely most of the boys we see in English studios wearing Higland kilts are English boys. There are so many examples in the photographic record that it is clearly a popular English fashion in the late-19th or very-early 20th century. It could be a family adopting a fashionable outfit. Here the Royal family was an influence. This was kind of both a fashion and politicl statement, meaning strong aligence to the Royal family. We see quite a few families adopting this style for the children, usually just the boys, but not always, in the late-19th century to a somewhat lesser degree in the early-20th century. The family here is a good example (figure 1). We see them in the portrait, but we do not know how commonly they wore the outfits. Given that we are talking well-to-do families, the boys probably had substantial wardrobes as well as school unifirms as they probably attended private schools. We suspect it was just for special occasiions and not everyday wear. Kilt outfits also could be just for fancy dress occassions. We think here age was a factor. The older boys wearing Highland kilts were probably more fancy dress occassuins. The younger boys wore more likely to have a Highland kilt out as party outfit. A good example is Ernest Shephard, the Winnie the Poo illustrator. This seems most common around the turn of the 20th century.
