The traditional highland dress for men is a kilt. This is a tartan that's usually primarily based on the families heritage and ancestry to Scotland. Tartan is a pattern consisting of criss crossed horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colors. Tartan’s came from woven wool, but now they are made in many other materials. Tartan is especially associated with Scotland. Scottish kilts nearly always have tartan patterns. Tartan is one of the patterns known as plaid in NorthAmerica, but in Scotland, a plaid is a tartan fabric slung over the shoulder and fasted with a metal clasp.
The kilt socks or kilt hose is also sn necessary part of the highland dress with a historically patterned turn over top. A stretch ribbed sock with a plain non cushioned sole making them perfect for wearing with an everyday or dress shoe. Colors range from Natural for more formal or evening wear, and dark green and fashionable black for day wear. Tartan is formed with swapping bands of colored (pre-dyed) threads woven as both warp and weft at right angles to each other. The weft is woven in an easy twill, 2 over – two under the warp, advancing one thread each pass. This forms detectable diagonal lines where different colours cross, which give the appearance of new colors blended from the original ones. The ensuing blocks of color repeat vertically and horizontally in a distinctive pattern of squares and lines known as a sett..
The English word tartan comes from the French tiretain. This French word is maybe obtained from the verb tirer in reference to woven cloth (as opposed to knitted material) .[note 1] Today tartan generally refers to colored patterns, though originally a tartan did not have to be made from any pattern in any way. As late as the 1830s tartan was sometimes described as “plain coloured … Without pattern”.[5] Patterned material from the Gaelic talking Scottish Highlands was called breacan, meaning many colors. In time the meanings of tartan and breacan were combined to explain particular kind of pattern on a particular sort of fabric. The pattern of a tartan is referred to as a sett. The sett is made of a sequence of woven threads which cross at right angles.
Today tartan might be often connected with Scotland; nonetheless the earliest proof of tartan is located far afield from the British Isles. According to the textile historian E. J. W. Barber, the Hallstatt culture of Central Europe, which is linked with traditional Celtic populations and did well between 400 BC to 100 BC, produced tartan-like textiles. A number of them were lately found exceptionally preserved, in Salzburg, Austria.[4] Textile research of fabric from Indo-European Tocharian graves in Western China has also shown it to be similar to that of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture. Tartan-like leggings were spotted on the “Cherchen Man”, a 3,000 year old mother found in the Taklamakan Desert in western China (see Tarim mummies).
Similar finds have been discovered in central Europe and Scandinavia.The earliest documented tartan in The UK, known as the “Falkirk” tartan, dates back to the 3rd century A. D. It was exposed at Falkirk in Stirlingshire, Scotland, about 400 metres north-west of the Antonine Wall. The fragment was stuffed into the mouth of an earthenware pot containing about 2,000 Roman coins. The Falkirk tartan has an easy check design, of natural light and dark wool. Early forms of tartan like this are thought to have been invented in pre-Roman times, and would have been preferred among the inhabitants of the northern Roman provinces[14][15] as well as in other bits of Northern Europe such as Jutland, where the same pattern was prevalent.
Geoffery Moffet writes articles on Scottish and English heritage for The Mohair Sock Company. This tract looks at the seriousness of kilt hose as a part of the traditional highland dress.