500 Years of Scottish Fashion ft. @Lilja Husmo | Celtic Historical Fashion

So some months back I started the 500 years of series which is essentially where we cover 500 years of a specific topic and I bring in historians and people who are really knowledgeable about these specific topics to be able to share more about it so that we can all expand our knowledge. This episode is going to be 500 years of Scottish fashion and I think it's so important to shine a light on fashions outside of English and American because there tends to be a lot less knowledge and representation. So part of my mission with this series is going to be sharing more of those unknown fashion styles and bringing more representation to the areas of fashion that don't get as much acknowledgement. So I've got my friend Lillia Husmo here today who is a fashion historian. Would you like to introduce yourself Lillia? My name is Lillia Husmo as Farsi said. I am a fashion historian. I specialize in Scottish fashion history and also Norwegian fashion history. I should mention that Lillia has an amazing YouTube channel so if you are really loving kind of cinematic sewing style content her channel is definitely the place to go. Your channel Lillia is honestly like one of my favorite channels on YouTube so I always try and plug you wherever I can because I'm like you need more subscribers, you need more subscribers. Thank you. So maybe we can go back to the 1400s. What was going on in Scotland at the time with regards to fashion and I guess events as well because it's all interconnected as we know with fashion. It's pretty much always related to what's going on in the world at the time too. There's not a lot of like primary sources of what people wore in the 15th century in Scotland. There wasn't a lot of specifically art of like what common people wore but there's a couple manuscripts that I've managed to dig out that we can kind of have a look at and see what what the general vibe was. The 1400s were quite a war-filled time. There was a lot of unrest between England and Scotland specifically. The fashion in Scotland at the time was mostly inspired by French fashion in the lowlands and in the nobility. We don't really know what the Highlanders wore at this time because they're barely even mentioned in these kind of sources. I thought we'd have a look at this French painting, the English crossing the Tyne. That's the river that is kind of used as the border between England and Scotland in that time period. So here is the English and the Scottish fighting across the Tyne but I think most interestingly is actually these guys on the side of the manuscript. The man in the funky hat talking to the goat because we get to see some kind of everyday clothing. A guy wearing a tunic, some it looks like hoses and these like strange monkey men that's on the bottom wearing these really lovely hoods and I think that's always like interesting to have a look at when studying fashion. It's like so what do the like side characters wear? The main people in this battle all wear standard armor. It's probably also quite a stylized picture. We've also got this little boat of people and this is a 1400s manuscript where someone has drawn the first people to discover Scotland as imagined by a 1400s scholar. It's not very high quality. I think it's really interesting to see the like the medieval inspiration. It's very clearly that they're wearing similar garments to what they wore in the previous painting so it's fair to assume that this is the artist's contemporary outfits rather than the first people to discover Scotland thousands of years ago. I don't think they would have been wearing 1400s outfits. It was quite difficult finding specifically this time period in visual references because there's so many 19th century artists who are like I know exactly what the 1400s looked like and therefore I will paint it. You can tell that it was a Victorian who drew it for a lot of it. Now going into the 1500s and the 16th century, how are things already shifting? I'm guessing by this point there's going to be a lot more resources already and the closer we get to modern times as well. It definitely is. The closer we get to modern times is there's more evidence and for the 1500s there's more evidence of both lowland and highland fashion which was difficult to find in the 1400s. So there's the divide between the lowlands which is quite influenced from France still. France and Scotland had quite big ties politically and the highlands which was mostly farmers, mostly kind of coastal communities and highland communities. I wanted to chat about these lovely drawings that was made by a Frenchman. They're kind of mean but they're actually really really clear depictions of what people could have worn. You can first look at this lowland man on the left. He's just named the Scot and he's wearing little trousers or trues. The Scots word for trousers and they look like they could be tartan trues. An early version of tartan trues and he's wearing this lovely shirt with huge sleeves and like a funky helmet. It's obviously a little bit stylized. This would probably be what a normal kind of soldier would wear for this time period. It's like something off of a haute couture runway. It looks very fashionable. So this is like when historians think that trues which is tartan trousers and kind of early kilts started emerging. There's not a lot of evidence for them but this is kind of where kilty highland wear started emerging. And then we've got this lovely lady next that is wearing a lovely medieval style gown. You can see her layers and she's got a lovely striped underskirt and she's got a little sun cap. She's got quite a long veil so I think she might not be a working woman but you know that that would be kind of what they would be wearing. And then we've got la Capitaine Sauvage which is the savage captain which is incredibly rich from the French. And this is then a highlander. He's wearing kind of a poofy blouse. You can see a sleeve. It looks like a bagpipe but it actually isn't. It's a sleeve and a bow, a huge sword and these lovely herringbone cape. It's kind of difficult to see but what looks like a sporran, the little pocket that is on the front of kilts, it looks like he's got an early version of a sporran, probably kind of when the sporran also started to emerge. And we've got then the highland lady. She is wearing a sheepskin coat, a lovely huge sheepskin coat and I actually think she looks a little bit like depictions of a selkie. In this time period it was very kind of medieval general look like inspired by France and the rest of Europe at the time but they also had their own niche clothing starting to spring up little individual fashion items that's separate from the rest of Europe. And I'm guessing most of what they're wearing would be their like linen hemp or wool. It would be a lot of wool. Wool was produced in Scotland at the time. There was some linen as well, probably imported. I think it's later on that they start producing their own linen. What about undergarments? Would they be linen? They would be linen or wool. Wool undergarments, ooh. Yeah, yeah, that's quite common in northern areas. You see it a lot in Scandinavian underwear as well. You know how we all think of tartan as being Scottish distinctly? Yeah. But a lot of modern tartan is not at all what Scottish people wore. No. We think tartan has been woven by Celts for thousands of years. However, them being made in modern tartan that we think of and also Celts specifically are more modern. So it would be kind of plainer kind of checked fabrics or tartan fabrics with less detail and it would usually be dyed with dye stuff from the local areas used for cloaks or trues. There's some kind of Viking era tartan that's like, I think they wove quite a lot then. But it's again kind of simple tartans and not like royal Stuart tartan. The reason that tartan is so popular in a lot of, because we think of it as really distinctly Scottish. The check with lots of different colours is quite common really all over. You can find it in Norway, you can find it in the Americas, you can find it in Asia. The reason it's so popular is because it's an easy way to weave a lot of fabric but like use up all the colours you have. They would dye the fabric, the threads before making the fabric. But there's only so much yarn threads that you can fit in a dye pot. So the dyes would be slightly different from that to that. And the easiest way to make that look nice is by making it look on purpose. Instead of having half a garment that's like red and half one that's pink, you create the check to make it look on purpose. A clever way of making things look fancier because you have to work with what you have. Yeah that's genius actually. It's very closely tied with highland wear, specifically kilts but also trues. But a lot of people think that either it's like people have been wearing kilts since like the beginning of time or like kilts have never been worn until Victorian era. People can't fathom that there is an in-between there. There's a lot of discourse around tartan and kilts where it's like it's an invented fashion but it's like it does come from somewhere. So what's going on now in the 1600s and into the 17th century? The Italian fashions were like huge in this area, all over Europe. This is when we start getting like nice portraits and not just like kind of Jesus and Maria. This is when you're getting commissioned family portraits, like loads of them. So you have more evidence to what at least people who could afford portraits were wearing. You can see they were very inspired by European fashion in the nobility. The roughy colours, the dark dramatic colours, the cut is very European in style. What would your everyday type people have worn from what we know? So everyday people would be wearing palmer version I was going to say of the nobility. You know the men would be wearing doublets but this is when kind of the the kilt and the trues really like kind of start becoming really fashionable. The group of these four men here are Scottish mercenaries. Basically they would travel in groups and rent out their services but you can see they're all wearing tartan-esque fabric and they're wearing them in different styles which I think is quite nice. You can see lots of different fashionable styles like the man wearing the trues in the middle there with this little doublet and the two guys on the right who are wearing something that very clearly is a great kilt. It looks very much like that and the little like poofy hats. They're very lovely. This is kind of what everyday people specifically in the highlands would be wearing, the men at least. Women would also be wearing plates but they would usually be smaller and they would be kind of on top of their regular clothing they would be wearing. Similar kind of cut to the nobility but like simplified. Long skirts, not super long they still had to wear usually long sleeves and the kind of like the fake off the shoulder thingy I think was quite common with like the chemise underneath to hide away any indecencies. So I think the 1600s is kind of when we start especially in the highlander scene like distinct fashion. The nobility is kind of copying Europe really. Another word for the great kilt is a plaid which is not actually the pattern as a lot of Americans describe tartan as plaid. A plaid is actually the garment that kind of looks like a great kilt. Probably comes from Norse plaid which means just blanket. Square of fabric and that is what would be used to create the drapes for both women and men but women would probably usually have less full plaids but this is also when that kind of starts becoming popular. And I like that a lot of these garments require no sewing. Basically just kind of draped like almost like a toga you just chuck stuff up. Yeah it's actually really genius. Yeah and it can be used in very a lot of different ways so like you know you could drape it over your shoulders like a cloak you could have it hanging down and warm your legs. You could use it as a sleeping bag so it's a very versatile garment. Going into the 1700s and 18th century I know the battle of Culloden is now happening in the 1740s. Things are really starting to change. During the 18th century is when the kind of tartan is Scottish like solidified for both Scottish people but also by the kind of English. During the Jacobean wars it was then used as kind of like a signaling to people that you were aligned with Jacobites and that. Before then it was just kind of an everyman's. People just wore kilts. People wore the great kilts. People wore like the ersatz. All of that was just kind of casual wear but this is when kind of it became political wear which is why in 1746 with the Act of Prescription Highland wear was banned. It's not specifically that tartan was banned. Highland wear in general was banned so trues, plaids, kilts, anything that looked like you know gave the idea that you could be a Jacobean sympathiser. In general fashion tartan declined because people didn't want to risk being arrested for looking highlander, looking political. People would still be wearing their kilts and their trues and tartans in kind of their local communities so there was a bit of that surviving but they would usually change into normal plain clothing. So like probably like French and English inspired clothes? Yeah yeah more kind of European fashion, lowland fashion. People think of tartan now as relating to specific families? Yeah. But that's not really how it was from what I understand? It's like both yes and no. So in the 18th century it would not have been specific tartans for specific families however one reason that that kind of myth started was that during the Jacobean wars people from the same clans would probably be wearing similar tartans because they have this access to the same dyes and the same weavers so they would be making what was fashionable in their little areas. When then a clan laird took his boys out on tour to go fight the English they would all kind of look similar even though it wasn't specifically because this is the clan Mackenzie tartan. It was more like okay we need some new outfits because we're going to be off on the road for days and days let's make some nice you know some nice kilts and it would be the same weavers so we'd be making it and they would be making it from the dye stuff of the area. So what what are women wearing in the 18th century? Women in the 18th century were wearing similar fashions to European, specifically French. Scotland was very closely tied with France in this in this time but they would also sometimes have tartan accessories. This is Isabella MacTavish Fraser and her gown was made they think around 1785 which is after the act of prescription was repealed and you could very openly wear highland wear again. After the act of prescription was repealed it was very fashionable to wear highland wear again because it's quite bright and interesting. The women would be wearing usually quite European style cut like English gowns and French gowns. Some would be wearing the aerosads or the plaids. They would be wearing it in the same way that you would be wearing cloak to kind of protect yourself from the weather. We've got this other lady which is a Scottish dress which is kind of a little bit later that's like 1790s but it's very much the kind of European fashion. Lots of like flower patterns and light nice fabrics. This was common both for lowland and highland fashions. I've done a lot of like research specifically on those kind of cotton chintz gowns in Scotland and they were very popular both with like upper class people and lower class people. Here's a painting of a highland dance which I thought was really lovely because it shows both women's and men's fashion in the highlands in the 18th century and you can see this lovely guy wearing his funky little hat. His top wear is very inspired by French and English and European fashion but he's wearing these lovely tartan trues and you can see the lovely like the jacket the lady is wearing and the aprons that were very popular and like the fish shoes and there's a man to the left wearing a kilt and also a guy dancing in the background who's wearing a kilt and you can almost see his butt. Quite a fashionable highlanders here and I've got one where it's just kind of the more lowlands fashion that's more European. Here's a painting from Edinburgh. Most people wearing kind of plain well not plain fashions but like compared to the very funky coloured and extravagant highlanders. After the act of prescription was repealed the kilt and tartan again became like really popular among everyone like highlanders, lowlanders, nobility like it kind of lost that connection with the clan kind of lairds and the wars of independence and such. Basically everyone wore it. Also got this lovely noble lady who's wearing a very French inspired you can see that beautiful lots of lace and her little pearls it's lovely. So there's lots of different styles in this period. They follow kind of the same trajectory as the rest of Europe but there will be kind of details that are different and they'll be wearing their ersads, their plaids, trues and kilts especially towards the end when that was kind of socially seen as okay again. You wouldn't get sent to Australia for wearing it. So going into the 1800s and the 19th century this is where like tartan goes crazy. Yeah this is when Scottish fashion becomes very noticeable. Other like people outside of Scotland noticed tartan. King George IV was the first monarch to visit Scotland almost since Scotland and England got this same crown. The Scottish were like really excited to show off Scotland and like start to rebuild the relationship between England and Scotland after the quite war-torn previous centuries. It was in 1822 when King George IV arrived and Walter Scott which is quite a famous Scottish poet had been kind of assigned to stage manage the event and he was quite theatrical. He sent out like invitations super far and was like wear your national wear, wear your kilts, wear your tartan. There was a weaver's company that was called Wilson and son of Banachburn and they started collecting information on what tartans had been used in Scotland before the act of prescription and they talked to clan lairds and their descendants and was like so what did your family used to wear? Like what design did they used to wear? And let kind of the clan lairds come and design their own tartans and look through kind of samples and be like oh I think that my granddad wore that. Which is kind of where we begin to see the the clan tartans as specifically for the clans because here is where they kind of started connecting that. And it wasn't originally going to be a this clan only wore this tartan kind of. It was more just like they wanted to weave tartan that meant something to the clans. Something that they could recognize and like several family members could recognize and be like my grandpa wore that. Which I thought was quite quite lovely. Very special yeah absolutely yeah. So this is kind of when the tartan was like super cool. The kind of the cut of the clothing was still very connected with the rest of Europe. This is when the kind of English fashion start being more central and they're starting copying English fashion more than French fashion. He even got a kilt made for him to like show how the Scottish-English union was good actually and we're having a good time and I like the Scots. He got both a bit ridiculous and some praise for wearing a kilt. He also apparently wore a kilt that was a little bit too short and wore pink tights so no one could see his legs. Oh yes I wish we had a photo of that. Yeah there's loads of paintings but they're all very flattering so they don't show the pink tights. This continued on to like Victorian times and Victoria was super interested in Scotland and tartan. Queen Victoria was quite a big influence on the image of what Scottish looked like. What Scottish clothing looked like. This tartan dress here it's a silk tartan dress and it was made for a Scottish noblewoman to wear to one of Queen Victoria's huge balls. It's really lovely like tartan but also silk. It's like kind of starting to see tartan made out of different fabrics and stuff. Scotland also did start to influence England and well and America as well kind of with the specifically the tartan dresses were very popular all around probably because of Queen Victoria's fascination with it. Yeah you see it so often in the 1840s to going into the 60s. We've also got these lovely islanders. These are a pair of people from the island of Skye Highland and Islands fashion and you can see the lady is wearing like a little checked almost tartany cloak. I think what's really interesting is these guys are from I think 1810s. They're very 1810s British fashion but they've got their own little style. You don't really see that exact thing anywhere else. Most of what she's wearing is probably dyed with indigo. Indigo was really popular on the coasts. I love her like her striped drugged skirt. A type of skirt that was very popular in working-class Scotland. It's a skirt made of wool and linen and it's usually stripy and dyed with indigo and it was very fashionable all the way from the 1810s up until like the early 1900s. What sort of undergarments are people wearing in the early 1800s? They would be wearing chemises and just kind of plain ones usually. They could be of wool or linen. The underwear doesn't really change that much during these years. They're quite plain, easy to wash garments you know. Men would just have their shirts as their undergarment. Let it all out. Yes. You know the whole thing of like are you a true Scotsman haha are you wearing underwear? I think that comes from the fact that people didn't used to wear that kind of underwear at all. Like neither men nor women. European fashions moved over to trousers kind of earlier than Scottish fashions so they would be wearing kind of tunic length clothing so like kilts and stuff and not wearing underwear. The women would also not wear underwear and the other countries would also not wear underwear but it would be noticeable because they were men who were wearing not trousers. You get me? Right yeah so you know if you sat strangely you might accidentally flash the person in front of you with something something private. Yeah I think that that would have been kind of normal in when everyone was wearing tunics you know when before hoses became the big thing but it was seen as odd when Scottish people were wearing kilts because oh indecent and you couldn't really tell for women because women were wearing longer skirts. Okay let's go on to the mid 1800s. The lady on the left here she's a kind of mid 19th century lady with her normal 19th century in general outfit but then she has her ersad her plaid to keep her warm. This lady is also not wearing shoes but I don't know if that would be very common at this time maybe earlier. Also apropos we've got these lovely fish ladies they're called fishwives and these were I think mostly lowland areas wore these kind of outfits specifically I know that in Musselburgh they wore these and in New Haven so like kind of Edinburgh the first or fourth coast kind of outfits. These lovely doubled striped skirts which are very quintessentially from the era. They've got their aprons wrapped in the classic fish sure wife type way where they they kind of like tuck them in to make a pocket. These would usually be quite colourful so they would have nice striped colourful underneath so when they then picked up their you know their to pick their fish in they would show off their nice little stripy petticoats and the underside of their aprons. I love that. They would usually have like quite a few of the over skirts or aprons to swap out so that there could always be one in the wash always one drying and they could be wearing one because they would get covered in fish scales. And they're kind of wearing very sort of classic kind of working class shirtwaist looking garments as well on the top I can see here and headscarves which is very common you get amongst like working class women. You've got here a fisherman from the same era he's got a very lovely outfit as well he's got his apron and his jacket with loads of buttons and his funky little hat. It's a tam isn't because it's kind of on the side. Yeah some kind of kind of tamas hat I think he's also from New Haven Edinburgh area. These pictures are from mid 1800s so like more 50s 60s. The working class clothing didn't really change too much during the Victorian era like this kind of the cut and stuff would change but they would still kind of wear they would just alter what they had rather than get new things so they would kind of keep the style a bit so you could still get people wearing those fishwife outfits into the 1900s. This is a specific hat that in specifically in West Lothian in Scotland all the farmer women's would be wearing them they're called uglies ugly little hats and I absolutely love them I adore them they were really popular from like the mid 19th century and they were still being used until like the 1930s in Scotland and they were made locally. I've got some fancy men's fashion this is like mid mid 19th century so you've got the the kilted man on the left with an absolutely huge sporran and then you've got the man in a lovely suit in the middle and then coated man to the right this was very stylish inner city menswear and they might be at like an event or something which is why the man on the left is kind of dressed up. He's got a little extra he's wearing both a kilt a matching jacket and then an aerosol plaid over that this is kind of local to Paisley so you probably know what the Paisley pattern is it is named so because a lot of weavers in Paisley in Scotland well they ripped off Indian weavers because they were very fashionable and then they were like we could just make that you can just do that it kind of evolved into its own craft so these Paisley shawls were incredibly popular from the late 18th century to like the 1860s 70s and they became kind of like a staple Scottish accessory for the Victorians specifically they would even be exporting them to America and to Europe doesn't have as much staying power as the tartan but it was very very popular for a while and that's why we still call the the kind of like Paisley pattern the Paisley pattern but I just wanted you specifically to show you to show you this lady which basically is wearing a grape gown there was like a big artist movement in the late 1800s early 1900s where they would have like the revival renaissance so what's going on in the in the very kind of early part of the 20th century I've got a little bit of more working class photos here like nobility is kind of not really that much a thing anymore there's like upper class people but they're not nobility you've got some lovely ladies here from 1910 I think and they've got that kind of classic late Edwardian long waistlines and long skirts and huge hats these ladies are at a woman's march so they're looking extra extra pretty for the event and I've also got a little family here you can see the kind of Edwardian pigeon breast shapes and the funky hats I love these two little kids as outfits that are kind of very fashionable they've got the pigeon breasts but like on an overall kind of look it's very kind of modern for the time obviously so I mean these fashions really to me are indistinguishable from English fashion at the time so I'm guessing due to like the colonization and everything Scottish fashion except for in the highlands was very kind of indistinguishable from the rest of Britain I've got these lovely 20s people at a I think they're at a game and you can see the lady here is wearing a very classic 1920s America and Britain and Europe all were wearing very similar things but you've also got this gentleman on the side you know wearing a kilt looking very stylish with his 20s jacket and little waistcoat I think the interesting thing about kilts is that tops have always kind of followed the fashion of the time like they would be wearing doublets with their kilts they would be wearing like long coats with their kilts and now we're looking at kind of of the time 30s like a suit with the kilt and that's kind of what we do today as well it's the modern suit but with a kilt so I think that's really interesting the kilt technically hasn't changed that much but the top half has absolutely yeah it's so fascinating how it does that if you want to have a look at factory work you can kind of see the lower working classes are very similar to the rest of the UK well thank you so thank you so much and we have a lot to learn I think from Celtic people and the way that they wore their clothes because they were masters at making clothing work for them and for their environment so there's so much knowledge that we can take from that a massive thanks to Lydia Husmo for sharing her knowledge about Scottish fashion I hope you've all enjoyed learning more about it I certainly did thank you so much for watching and I'll see you all in two weeks for another video