Calico is a heavy plain-woven textile made from unbleached, and often not fully processed, cotton. It may also contain unseparated husk parts. The fabric is far coarser than muslin, but less coarse and thick than canvas or denim. However, it is still very cheap owing to its unfinished and undyed appearance.
A kilt is a garment resembling a wrap-around knee-length skirt, made of twill-woven worsted wool with heavy pleats at the sides and back and traditionally a tartan pattern. Originating in the Scottish Highland dress for men, it is first recorded in the 16th century as the great kilt, a full-length garment whose upper half could be worn as a cloak. The small kilt or modern kilt emerged in the 18th century, and is essentially the bottom half of the great kilt. Since the 19th century, it has become associated with the wider culture of Scotland, and more broadly with Gaelic or Celtic heritage.
Madras is a lightweight cotton fabric with typically patterned texture and tartan design, used primarily for summer clothing such as pants, shorts, lungi, dresses, and jackets. The fabric takes its name from the former name of the city of Chennai in south India.
Tartan is a patterned cloth with crossing horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colours, forming simple or complex rectangular patterns. Tartans originated in woven wool, but are now made in other materials. Tartan is particularly associated with Scotland, and Scottish kilts almost always have tartan patterns.
Flannel is a soft woven fabric, of varying fineness. Flannel was originally made from carded wool or worsted yarn, but is now often made from either wool, cotton, or synthetic fiber. Flannel is commonly used to make tartan clothing, blankets, bed sheets, sleepwear, and several other uses.
Gingham, also called Vichy check, is a medium-weight balanced plain-woven fabric typically with tartan (plaid), striped, or check duotone patterns, in bright colour and in white made from dyed cotton or cotton-blend yarns. It is made of carded, medium or fine yarns.
Highland dress is the traditional, regional dress of the Highlands and Isles of Scotland. It is often characterised by tartan. Specific designs of shirt, jacket, bodice and headwear may also be worn along with clan badges and other devices indicating family and heritage.
The belted plaid is a large blanket-like piece of fabric which is wrapped around the body with the material pleated or, more accurately, loosely gathered and secured at the waist by means of a belt. Typically, a portion of the belted plaid hangs down to about the knees or ankles with the rest of the material being wrapped up around the upper body in a variety of ways and pinned or otherwise secured to keep it in place.
Hodden is a coarse, undyed cloth made of undyed wool, formerly much worn by the peasantry of Scotland from prehistory. Hodden, with wadmal, represent two similar cultural fabrics in Scottish history. Hodden is an early-modern period name for a primarily Gaelic fabric, earlier named lachdann in Gaelic, and even earlier lachtna in Old Irish; while wadmal was a Scandinavian fabric, in the now-Scottish islands and Highlands. Both are usually woven in 2/2 twill weave but are also known in plain or tabby weave. Both are a thick, coarse, fulled homespun cloth typically made of natural undyed wool of the vari-coloured Northern European short-tailed sheep breeds. The Scots preferred to breed strains of sheep in various areas to provide the local preferred colour of natural wool used for cloth to protect the poor and rural peasants from the elements.
Trews are men's clothing for the legs and lower abdomen, a traditional form of tartan trousers from Scottish Highland dress. Trews could be trimmed with leather, usually buckskin, especially on the inner leg to prevent wear from riding on a horse.
Houndstooth, hounds tooth check or hound's tooth, also known as dogstooth, dogtooth, dog's tooth,, is a duotone textile pattern characterized by a tessellation of light and dark solid checks alternating with light-and-dark diagonally-striped checks—similar in pattern to gingham plaid but with diagonally-striped squares in place of gingham's blended-tone squares—traditionally in black and white, although other contrasting colour combinations may be used.
Tweed is a rough, woollen fabric, of a soft, open, flexible texture, resembling cheviot or homespun, but more closely woven. It is usually woven with a plain weave, twill or herringbone structure. Colour effects in the yarn may be obtained by mixing dyed wool before it is spun.
Linsey-woolsey is a coarse twill or plain-woven fabric woven with a linen warp and a woollen weft. Similar fabrics woven with a cotton warp and woollen weft in Colonial America were also called linsey-woolsey or wincey. The name derives from a combination of lin and wool. This textile has been known since ancient times. Known as shatnez (שַׁעַטְנֵז) in Hebrew, the wearing of this fabric was forbidden in the Torah and hence Jewish law.
Border tartan, sometimes known as Borders tartan, Northumbrian tartan, Northumberland tartan, shepherds' plaid, shepherds' check, Border drab, or Border check, is a design used in woven fabrics historically associated with the Anglo-Scottish Border, particularly with the Scottish Borders and Northumberland. Possibly the most identifiable Border tartan garment of the region is the maud, made popular from the 1820s by fashionable Border Scots such as Sir Walter Scott, James Hogg, Henry Scott Riddell and Robert Burns.
Check is a pattern of modified stripes consisting of crossed horizontal and vertical lines which form squares. The pattern typically contains two colours where a single checker is surrounded on all four sides by a checker of a different colour.
Tattersall is a style of tartan pattern woven into cloth. The pattern is composed of regularly-spaced thin, even vertical warp stripes, repeated horizontally in the weft, thereby forming squares.
Formal trousers, also known as formal striped trousers or colloquially spongebag trousers, are grey striped or patterned formal trousers for day attire in traditional Western dress code, primarily associated with formal morning dress or secondly its semi-formal equivalent black lounge suit. Traditionally made from heavy wool ranging from worsted, melton to partial twill weave, the pattern is most often of a muted design in stripes of black, silver, white and charcoal grey in various combinations. In addition, formal trousers may also come in check patterns, such as houndstooth check, or plaids, although these variants are widely considered as not the most formal.
A maud is a woollen blanket or plaid woven in a pattern of small black and white checks known as Border tartan, Shepherd's check, Shepherd's plaid or Galashiels grey. It was in common use as an item of clothing in the southern counties of Scotland and the northern counties of England until the early twentieth century.
District tartans for the Commonwealth of Australia and for each of its constituent States have been registered in the Scottish Register of Tartans (SRT). Additionally, fashion tartans covering either Australia as a whole, or its capital city, Canberra, have been registered in the SRT, as have district tartans in respect of some of Australia's local government areas.
Regimental tartans are tartan patterns used in military uniforms, possibly originally by some militias of Scottish clans, certainly later by some of the Independent Highland Companies (IHCs) raised by the British government, then by the Highland regiments and many Lowland regiments of the British Army, and eventually by some military units in other countries. The earliest evidence suggesting militia uniform tartans dates to 1691, and the first certain uniform tartan was that of the Royal Company of Archers in 1713. The IHCs raised 1725–29 by the British government appear to have had one or more uniform tartans, though some later ones did not. The first true Highland regiment of the British Army was the 42nd Regiment of Foot formed by amalgamation of the IHCs in 1739, and had its own consistent uniform tartan by 1749 or 1757 at the latest. Some later Highland units also wore this tartan, while others developed minor variations on it, usually by adding bright-coloured over-checks. Some few regiments developed their own tartans not based on Black Watch, including the 75th, 79th, Fraser Fencibles, and Loyal Clan Donnachie Volunteers. Some units developed special tartans for bandsmen and grenadiers.
