Figure 1.--This is an English cabinet card. Unfortunately we do not know the boy's name or when his portrait was taken. All we know, however, is that this boy's portrait was taken at a studio in Oundle, Rutland. Our first inclination was to date it at about 1870 based on the photographic format. The full Eton collar, however, suggests to us a date about 1880, but this is just a guess at this time. Note that Highland garments like caps, sporans, and plaid knee socks were often worn with kilt suits in England. This was less common in America.

HBC has only limited information on kilt suits in Britain, but we are begining to acquire some information. The kilt suit appears to have been essentialy an American garment. We have, however, noted a few images of British boys waring kilt suits. Some times sporans were added which was very rare in America. We have begun to evaluate the kilt suit in Britain. They seem to have been more common in America, but we do see them in Britain. Most of the British examples we have found are English. This may be because of the much larger population of England. Scotland had a much smaller population.

England

HBC has little information that kiltsuits were worn in England. We have rarely noted photographs of English boys wearing kilt suits. We have, however, noted some 19th century images. English mothers had some idea about how a kilt should be worn, although certainly not as much as Scottish mothers. The decission of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to dress the princes in kilts mean that the boys wore proper Highland kilts. There was, however, no precedence for any kilt-like garments like kilt suits. A Scottish reader has provided an assesment of kilt suits in Scotland and England. His conclusion was that they were not worn in either England or Scotland. The kilt suit appears to have been a destinctly American garment. We have, however, noted a few images of English boys wearing kilt suits. That meant kilt outfits with matching jackets and kilts, rather than tartan kilts. Unlike American boys, English boys appear to have worn sporans with their kilt suits.

Scotland

HBC has no indication that kilt suits were worn to any extent in Scotland. We have noted very few photographs of Scottish boys wearing kilt suits. We have a relatively small Scottish archive. Even so, we have found quite a few portraits of Scottish boys wearing Highland kilts. And if kilt suits were very common we would have noted at least a few. It is likely that Scottish parents familiar with the kilt probably would not have accepted a non-traditional usage. American mothers had no real idea what a real kilt was. Thus a skirt with a few pleats or perhaps a subdued tartan pattern were acceptable as a kilt. We uspect Scottish parents mostly wanted real kilts. A Scottish reader has provided an assesment of kilt suits in Scotland and England. His conclusion is that they were not worn to any extent. The kilt suit thus appears to have been a destinctly American garment although worn to a minor extent in some other countries.

Wales

We susoect that kilt suits were worn in wa;es with similar conventions as in england. Our welsh archive is, however, much smaller than our english archive and we can not yet domnstrate this. Other fashions trends are virtually identical so we suspect the same is the case for kilt suits.

British Assessment

HBC reader George Mackay provides an assessment of the kilt suit in both England and Scotland. The answer to the HBC enquiry on kilt suits is that I don't know for certain what the position was with regard to kilt suits in Scotland. But the most probable answer follows.

Background

There are some pre-Victorian illustrations of boys and men in tartan, with trews or kilts, and a kind of tartan vest or doublet in the case of the boys. In the 18th century, when the kilt was often made from a full plaid, the wearer would naturally have the upper part of his body partly swathed in tartan. Given this, there would seem to be no great bar to having a tartan jacket with the short kilt which was standard by the 19th century. It is also true that the Victorians had a distressing tendency to cover almost anything with tartan. This extended to wallpaper, carpets, table-cloths and seat-covers. A railway locomotive was painted in an approximation to tartan for one of Queen Victoria's visits to Scotland. It is likely enough that they experimented with tartan jackets to match the kilt. But such experiments were likely to be one-offs, and probably for men's rather than for boys' wear. Some men in present-day Scotland still have tartan dinner-jackets made for themselves.

Middle-class Correctness

The middle-class passion for 'correctness' would be enough to ensure that the kilt garb as normally seen in illustrations of Victorian children: bonnet, jacket, sporran, stockings, etc., was adhered to closely by the great majority. Convention dictated that the jacket should be one of various tweed mixtures, not including a tartan cloth. The word 'suit' - originally just meaning a 'set' of clothes - would not be relevant since it had already begun to acquire the meaning of matching garments.

American Kilt Suits

The illustrations HBC has of American kilt-suits suggest that the word 'kilt' was somewhat taken in vain. The essence of a real kilt is that it is a wrap-around garment, and the lower part of the American kilt suit (as you point out) usually looks much more skirt- or dress-like. A sporran is rarely in evidence. I wonder if the name was not simply used to lend a masculine tone to a suit that effectively postponed the age at which an American boy might hope to acquire breeches or trousers. HBC had thought that the kiltsuit like most American clothing had British origins, but instead it appears to have been an American original.

Never Used

There is no literature on the subject. What children wore is rarely discussed in works on historical Highland costume; and Highland dress itself is hardly more than a footnote in standard works on costume. But even in general literature I am not aware of any mention of the kilt-suit in the lives of Scottish youth during the nineteenth century. Given the emphasis placed on Highland dress, and the correctness thereof, I am inclined to think that the kilt suit was never used, and that this sort of outfit established itself on the 'periphery' where first of all, the exact form of the kilt was not necessarily known, or troubled about; and secondly, there was not the pressure for correctness that undoubtedly was present, in middle and upper-class usage, in Scotland and England. Thus American mothers, children's clothiers, tailors and catalogue houses could interpret the term as they wished, whilst still retaining the verbal mystique of the 'kilt'. Study of contemporary drapers' and tailors' catalogues from Scotland and England might reveal otherwise, but what I have seen of Highland dress outfitters' advertisements suggests that they stuck closely to the conventional kilt and accoutrements. It is of course possible that younger Scottish and English boys were clothed in an equivalent of the American 'kilt suit', not under that name, and not as part of Highland dress, but under the all-enveloping term of 'frocks' or'dresses.' With good wishes,

HBC Note

Proving the non-existenvce of something is often a difficult undertaking. Gerorge is very knowledgeable Scottish kilts. HBC would only add to George's assesment that if the kilt suits were worn in England and Scotland that George would certainly seen old photographs in the historical record. Thus the fact that he has not noted old photographs of English and Scottish boys wearing kilt suits is a very strong indicator that such suits were not worn in Britain.

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Created: January 20, 2002
Last updated: 12:12 AM 11/23/2023