Footwear
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.
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.
Above: Very smart and no white
hose or ghillie brogues in sight!
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 a reliable source of high quality shoes like this,
but when we do, we'll update this section.
