Can i wear tartan

A new clan tartan must be approved by the clan chief. If we have any questions about the name of your proposed tartan, we will contact you.

Further guidance on naming your tartan can be found on the Tartan name guidance page. The threadcount must be unique and also sufficiently different to any other design on the Register that it cannot be easily confused.

You can compare your design before submitting an application by using the compare designs facility on the Tartan Register website on the Search Designs page. Please note that it is very difficult to 'teach' a computer how to identify tartans which are too similar to each other.

Therefore, although we encourage you to use the 'compare designs' facility before submitting the application to register your tartan, we may still find that your design is not 'sufficiently different' to all others already recorded when processing your application. If your design appears to be too similar to a tartan already registered, we will contact you to discuss how it might be changed. Further guidance on what makes a tartan design unique and "sufficiently different" is available on the Tartan Register website on the Unique and 'sufficiently different' designs guidance page.

The threadcount indicates the number of stripes of the warp and weft in sequence and the number of threads in each stripe. It has been described as the DNA of a tartan. The threadcount is usually provided as a series of capital letters and numbers.

Each capital letter represents a colour and the number beside each letter dictates the precise number of threads required so that the weaver can set up the loom accurately. A threadcount can also be taken from a woven sample, providing it is large enough to show the full pattern. Your application must include the threadcount for your tartan otherwise it will be refused.

Further information on the threadcount can be found on the Threadcount guidance page. If you still have no luck then there are a couple of options. Firstly you can check back through your family tree and see if a Scottish name comes up. Some people claim that you should check back along your mothers side but this is a bit of a myth, there are no rules about what surname you choose, if you have Scottish ancestry and can find a clan tartan then feel free to wear it.

If that route fails then maybe your name is associated with a Scottish District. Remember, the ancient colors represent faded cloth. A piece of new tartan, woven years ago, would look more like our "modern" colors than anything else. Dress tartans and hunting tartans are another matter. These names don't refer to color schemes. They actually refer to different tartan designs. The long and short of it is that hunting tartans have more green or brown, or some other natural tone and dress tartans have more white.

The names do not reflect actual usage or restriction in wear. You can wear a hunting tartan to a formal occasion, and you can wear a dress tartan while hunting, for that matter. Dress tartans reflect an eighteenth century fashion for women's tartans to be white or cream based. But this does not mean that men cannot wear a dress tartan today, any more than they can't wear a white shirt or pants.

Hunting tartans are given as an alternative if your clan tartan is predominantly red or yellow, or some other bright color. Green clan tartans don't typically have hunting versions. In essence, they already are hunting tartans! The important thing to remember if you find that your clan has six or seven tartans to choose from is that they all represent your clan. None is "wrong" or "right. After all, one of the most powerful aspects of tartan is its ability to invoke a shared history, symbolising a belonging to a particular family, clan, or group.

It's also quite common to get somewhat lost in the sheer amount of tartans available. So today, we're tackling a few of the most common questions you may have about choosing a tartan and hopefully, alleviating some of the confusion surrounding picking a tartan that you can proudly wear. Let's get the most common question out of the way first. No, you do not have to be Scottish to wear tartan!

Evidence of tartan-wearing has even been found as far away as China , and more generally, tartan is just about showing that you belong to a group. The way you come to belong to a group, however, can come in many forms.

Marriage, close friendships, business partnerships, and a whole host of other ties are all perfectly reasonable justifications for why you would want to wear a given tartan. Choose a different one! In the broad history of Scotland, clans and families married one another, conquered each other, and mixed allegiances on a regular basis. If you're committed to wearing a tartan your ancestors wore but don't like the tartan, have a look at whether they may have been a sept of a different clan, or had a close relationship with a family with a tartan that you find aesthetically pleasing.

It's important to highlight that nobody will fault you for choosing a tartan based on aesthetics alone either! If you just like the way a particular tartan looks, there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting it.