How to Wear Highlandwear

Highlandwear is steeped in traditonal and full of little details.
We know it can be tricky to get right and keep right even when you're dancing all night long!

This guide is designed to first of all, highlight some of the common mistakes that occur when putting on the kilt and then the rest of your highland ensemble.
We also have a useful order of dress guide to help you get ready and a detailed look at how to tie ghillie brogues.

We want you to look your absolute best and feel your very best too!

Getting dressed may seem like a pretty obvious thing we do...we do it every day after all.
But the details in highlandwear can make it a wee bit trickier than, let's say, a suit.

This guide aims to give you an order of dress which will allow you to get dressed neatly and comfortably, resulting in a smart and beautifully worn highlandwear look.

1) Start with your shirt and tie (and your pants...but we hope that goes without saying)

2) Next, put on your kilt socks, flashes and brogues (further down this page there is a "how to tie your ghillie brogues" video)
Pull your sock all the way on then strap the garters of the flashes underneath the bottom of your knees. The flashes sit on the outsides of the calves. You can then pull the top of the socks back down over the garters of the flashes, covering them and leaving just a few inches of the flashes hanging out. Short gent's may need to double up the fold over of the socks

3) Time for your kilt - make sure the waistband is sitting snuggly around your natural waist (around about where your belly button is) - you will need to pull the straps as tight as you can to ensure the kilt remains in the correct position

4) The waistcoat goes on next - if you are wearing a tweed jacket, the bottom button will remain undone

5) It's now time for the sporran - use the opening waistcoat as a guide to help you, using your hand to measure one handspan down from the waistband of the kilt/the bottom button of the waistcoat to the top of the sporran (you may need a pal to help you fasten the sporran at the back and pull the chain through the large sporran loops at the back of the kilt)

6) Now you can put on your jacket, remembering that if you are fastening it only to fasten the top button

7) You can now complete your look with your sgian dubh! This sits inside the socks of your writing hand down the outside of the leg. Only about an inch of the top of the sgian dubh is left visible above the top of the sock.

There's a really knack to tying ghillie brogues and the following video aims to give you a step by step guide on how to tie them securely and neatly.

A common mistake people make is tying them way to high up the leg and spending the rest of the party constantly tying their shoe laces - not with our method!
Take a look...

1) Sizing is important, we recommend going a half size down for ghillie brogues as, due to the lack of tongue, they tend to feel quite wide.

2) Start by twisting (not knotting) the laces four times around each other.

3) Keeping close to the ankle pull the laces to the back of the ankle and twist them around each other twice - keep low and close to the ankle, the further up the leg you travel the more the laces are likely to fall down).

4) Bring the laces to the front again and create a cross.

4) Finally tie the laces on the outside of the leg. Make a double knot as you would your brogues or trainers normally.