Footwear
Ghillie brogues - notice the long laces with the leather tassles.
What footwear you adopt, all depends on the occasion and there are no hard and fast rules; your choice can range from bare feet through to the ubiquitous ghillie brogies. If you're out walking then you should wear what's suitable for the conditions and what you're comfortable in - trainers, sneakers, walking boots, fashion boots or welly-gogs.
If it's a smarter affair then you might want to wear a pair of brogues. If it's an evening event standard fare seems to be ghillie brogues with the long laces that you twist round the ankles but don't feel those are essential - you can actually wear any brogues (black, brown or whatever) that you fancy and indeed, you don't need to wear brogues at all - a good pair of presentable day shoes would be quite in order - as long as they don't look out of place with the outfit you're wearing. That would also cut down on the expense since they would double up for wearing with clothes other than Highland dress. That has the added advantage that they'd get 'broken in' a lot quicker.
The Prince of Wales doesn't wear ghillie brogues!
If you feel you must have a pair of ghillie brogues then keep them for the right occasion - wearing them in the daytime for anything other than your wedding is a bit over the top and smacks of your outfit being a uniform.
.jpg "Showing how you twist the long laces together, taking them around the ankle and back round to the front where they're tied in a conventional bow.")
Showing how you twist the long laces together, taking them around the ankle and back round to the front where they're tied in a conventional bow.As an aside, you may have read elsewhere on our website that modern brogues - known the world over - have evolved from the Highland brogan. Those were the primitive deerskin footwear worn by Highlanders in which they punched holes to let the water OUT. Those laces on the ghillie brogues are also a hangover from those days when the deerskin brogan were secured by long laces extending up the calf.
For out walking - not trekking over hills - they would be fine. If they're good enough for the Prince of Wales (shown above) then you needn't worry about being apprehened by the style police!
Three Highlanders all wearing ordinary brogues and not the ghillie brogue version.
If you'd like to really go to town with your evening Highland dress then you could look for a pair of new but old-fashioned buckle shoes along the lines of the ones shown in our banner illustrtation above and reapeated below. At the moment, we don't know of any manufacturers but as soon as we do, we'll update this section.
Here you can see two pairs of very formal buckle shoes on the left. On the right are two pairs of ghillie brogues showing that they don't need to be black. The pair on the extreme right show an alternative method of securing the long laces. This illustration is from one of our 1870 MacLeay watercolours commissioned by Queen Victoria.
Buckle brogues in soft leather. Courtesy Kinloch Anderson.