Scott's Plaid!

Each spring, NYC Tartan Week sees New York City awash with tartan, as Scottish heritage takes centre stage. It’s a celebration that presents plaid as a timeless symbol of Scottish identity, but the story behind it is far more complex.

Much of what we now associate with tartan, from clan setts to its wider cultural meaning, took shape in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Figures such as Sir Walter Scott played a significant role in shaping these ideas, helping to turn tartan into a powerful emblem of Scotland and its past.

Our former Curator, Kirsty Archer-Thompson, tells all...

Scott’s Shepherd's Plaid 

In 1828, Scott sat for the legendary sculptor Madame Tussaud at his Edinburgh home. The resulting waxwork was destroyed by fire in 1925, but a surviving archival image reveals that one of its original outfits was, indeed, a kilt. Though undeniably Romantic, this is a marvellous piece of Victorian theatre given that there is no evidence that Scott ever wore a kilt, preferring to wear Campbell tartan trews during the Royal Visit of 1822 in homage to his great-grandmother, Jean Campbell of Silvercraigs. Tussaud’s kilted author is a reminder that Scott’s story remains stubbornly interwoven with the history of tartan and plaid. But how did this come to pass?   

The chequered history of tartan in Scotland stretches back to the 16th century, where the choice of colour differentiation was more driven by social status and access to natural dyes, whether local or imported, than it was by familial bloodlines. Even in the 1745 Jacobite rising, evidence suggests that choices of tartan patterns or ‘setts’ were personal, rather than markers of clan allegiance. Though forever associated with Scotland, the kilt itself was actually an English invention of the 1730s popularised by the Lancastrian followers of Bonnie Prince Charlie! The Highland Dress Act of 1746 restricted the use of tartan to the military regiments and Hanoverian elite, and it is this military differentiation that probably forged the link between pattern choice and identity perceptions.  

It is in this period - the height of the Romantic era - that Scott’s cultural impact super-charges the story. Scott’s Waverley Novels, and particularly Rob Roy and its adaptations on the stage, had created a frenzy for Highland dress amongst fans and theatregoers. It suited manufacturers such as William Wilson & Son of Bannockburn to stoke this tribal competition and enthusiasm for all things Scottish. Though their Key Pattern Book was certified in 1819 by the Highland Society of London, Clan Chiefs could be found in ready-made patterns and others were hastily renamed to fit the brief. Meanwhile, Scott and his associate David Stewart of Garth set about forming the Royal Celtic Society of Edinburgh in 1820 to champion the ancient dress and customs of the Highlands. Stewart of Garth would go on to add further fuel to the fire ahead of the Royal Visit of 1822, publishing a book on the Sketches of the Highlanders of Scotland that stretched the pedigree of tartan and the kilt back into the mists of time.

Both men enthusiastically infused the 1822 Royal visit with tartan, motivated by a desire to repatriate and restore the reputation of the Highland people following a century of conflict. Perhaps the moment that would go down in history more than any other was George IV’s appearance at a levee in an astonishingly expensive tartan outfit, his bloated legs squeezed in buff-coloured tights below his unfortunately short kilt. However, to only focus on this would be to disregard the incredible impact that this plaided panorama had on the history of Scotland and the cementation of its Victorian tourist appeal, as sightseers followed in the footsteps of their favourite literary characters wearing Rob Roy tartan kilts or the Lucia di Lammermoor sett, or decked themselves in plaid for the Waverley Ball, the most popular fancy-dress ball of its day.  

Kirsty Archer-Thompson