Have you watched the recent Dior Cruise show? Tears started flowing as I listened to the skirl of bagpipes, because I’m actually quite sentimental. Walking ahead of the models, the bagpipe player was clad in a red gown, her hair twisted in a warrior braid. She opened the show walking around, as the pipes echoed through the grounds of Drummond Castle in Perthshire, Scotland,
My best friend, who is Scottish, messaged me immediately to ask me if I had worked on the show? No, I was merely thousands of miles away, wishing I could have been there to witness it in real life.
If you’ve read some of my other pieces, it will be no surprise that I'm not a fan of Dior, but this collection was actually stunning, if a bit large. I am, however, terribly biased as I adore tartan, Scotland and folk history. So if there was ever a show that would tug at my heartstrings, this would be the one.
I thought there were many wonderful re-workings of the cloths from tartan to argyle and plaid. The bold purple opening dresses, with frayed edges completed by a Dior Sporran of sorts. Look 5, a transparent black tartan fringe dress, made my granny goth heart skip a beat. Nyaduola and Rejoice in chain mail armorial dresses, a nod to Scotland's bloody history.
And here I couldn’t help but wonder, where the line between tartan and tartanry would be drawn. A quick history lesson, or a few episodes of Outlander would teach you that the subjugation of the Scots, by the hand of the English, was bloody and brutal. The infamous battle of Culloden in 1745, where over a thousand men lost their lives fighting for the Scottish rebellion, marked the beginning of the end for much of Scottish culture. There is some debate around whether the tartan, which distinguished each clan from another, was banned in the 1746 act of Proscription, but nevertheless attempts to erase traditional culture remain an undeniable part of Scottish history.
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