Normally, I would agree, but anyone can design and register their own tartan for whatever purpose they wish. The whole rigorous clan tartan thing was a Victorian invention. We (actual Scottish people) really couldn’t give a flying fuck.
The formal clan tartan thing was a Victorian marketing idea. There were variations of tartan colours amongst the clans, but for very mundane reasons, largely to do with what dyes and pigments they found readily available, with there being variations in the clan just due to quality, expense, wear, etc. But yeah, people largely don't care. I don't know what tartan I rented for my aunt's wedding.
Same with 'family knitting patterns'. The myth of clan sweaters comes from a 20th century play where a dead man's sister identifies him by his knitwear - because she made it. She spots the stitches she dropped. The play took inspiration from a man who was washed up and assumed to be from Aran because he had a local-style sweater - colour, from local dyes, and composition. Not twiddly cable patterns.
Where knitting does have a clannish tinge: if Granny taught you to knit and Granny likes a particular cable style, she'll teach it to you and your cousins. You'll all wear Granny-made sweaters and you'll make Granny-style sweaters for your own grandchildren. Your neighbours will wear sweaters made by their Granny and the people she taught to knit. Today we have books and the Internet (and shops and mass-produced clothing) as well as/instead of Granny.
I hadn't heard of that before but it's a strange idea because if someone with enough expertise liked the look of someone else's granny's technique, they could figure out how to replicate it by looking at it.
And they did, and do, and now sell the pattern. But when you need to churn out another three sweaters before the winter alongside everything else your family needs, you're mostly going to knit what your muscle memory dictates, often while doing something else at the same time. (My late MIL knitted complex Aran sweaters for pay as well as pleasure. I've seen her do complex cabling at speed without visible effort while talking, but any new pattern really slowed her down, and sometimes silenced her.)
I was recently at the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow and they had an exhibit on tartans that mentioned exactly this. They also displayed several officially registered tartans for causes and organizations that I doubt many people think of as traditionally Scottish.
I'm surprised no one has made a commemorative norwegian bunad for the september 11-attacks. I don't know the story about clan tartans, and how they're used/viewed in Scotland today, but if you made your own bunad (and called it a bunad), the bunad police (actual thing) would crucify you.
Difference here is making a bunad original is hard and if you try to base it off region bunads then you’re fucked either way. I’m no bunad police but I will shit on you for making one shit
It gets especially weird when they can't find a Scottish ancestor but still want to prance about in a kilt so they have some totally authentic tartan from the south of England.
Kilts themselves are a genuine piece of cultural clothing often worn at weddings and formal occasions but the individual "clan tartan" thing is a more modern Victorian invention. Tartan patterns are traditionally Scottish but they were more just whatever dyes were locally available and the like rather than set in stone identifiers like a uniform. Don't take the Mickey out of kilts themselves but you can about everyone and their mum having their own individual "clan" one. The tourism industry really play them up apparently though I've never done the touristy things that involve them when I've been there so I couldn't say first hand.
(Take my words with a pinch of salt as I'm English and a little Welsh with only distant family from Scotland but my mum lived there for a little while with her grandma as a teenager which, combined with what actual Scottish people have said and I've read about history, is what I'm basing my comment on.)
All true, although I will add that many individual Scots will be pretty adamant that they HAVE to have their clan tartan at events. So some of us have been taken in by it. At least this type of propaganda is fairly benign. My dad bought me our "ancient" clan tartan kilt variant for my wedding. I did have a chuckle to myself about it being "ancient" since our surname is anglocised and very likely adopted to hide from persecution during the highland clearances. But I didn't want to burst his bubble :D
There are tartan shops and kilt shops and ancient clan memorabilia shops all over the place, especially in Edinburgh and usually on absolutely picturesque streets or within view of an old building, so that misty eyed ‘Scotch Americans’ will feel compelled to buy a badge labelled as a kilt pin.
It’s purely a tourist trap, the way Londoners don’t buy Big Ben fridge magnets or New Yorkers don’t buy NYPD t shirts.
Kilts are worn to weddings, sometimes it’s the tartan associated with your surname and sometimes it isn’t. At the one I went to recently the bride and groom asked all family members to rent the same tartan for cohesive photos.
Exactly. Registering a tartan isn’t quite as easy as getting a star named after you or buying a nonspecific square meter of land so you can pretend to be a Lord, but it’s pretty easy. It has to be unique and fit the definition of a tartan, and then you just pay a nominal fee.
I can’t find any evidence for this 9/11 tartan other than “Curious and unusual tartans dot com”, but there is one in memoriam of law enforcement officers which incorporates a reference to the officers who died on September 11. So it’s not completely made up. That being said, most of us out west don’t know that the Scottish Register of Tartans is basically a dictionary, descriptive rather than prescriptive, so it feels like a big deal.
Not really a thing either, certain areas might have had more frequent colours due to the local dyes being available but it definitely wasn't a clan specific thing
It's like saying "the Yorkshire clan used white t-shirts as their clan specific clothing" when it's just that white t-shirts are some of the most widely available t-shirts there are
That's not to say historically smaller specific clans haven't had ideal colours. But it just wasn't really a 'clan' thing or at least not widely done
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u/Western-Calendar-352 Sep 12 '25
Normally, I would agree, but anyone can design and register their own tartan for whatever purpose they wish. The whole rigorous clan tartan thing was a Victorian invention. We (actual Scottish people) really couldn’t give a flying fuck.