KILT ACTION IN TULSA

When I was in Pretoria, South Africa, I dragged my friends to a Scottish festival complete with pipe band competitions and Scottish foods for sale. I was enchanted by the sound of bagpipes floating towards us from what looked like a huge park, and we followed our ears until we got to the site. You can really hear those war pipes from a long way off. Recently, I was able to go to the Oklahoma Scottish Festival . It was a strikingly similar festival complete with band competitions.


The first thing I did of course was to follow my ears, and find the competition field for the Pipe & Drum bands.

The judges check the group for something worth points and make marks on their clipboards. These judges are extremely serious, and even cup their hands around their ears to better isolate the bagpipe sounds.

The first band I watched was the Silver Thistle. They hail from Austin, Texas. Their unit was slick and polished, and the judges were on them like fleas to a dog. I believe they performed very well.



Members of the Silver Thistle Pipe and Drum corps perform in Tulsa, Oklahoma.



Here is another example of one of the judges pacing around the group. What I really enjoyed was the fact that even the judges were dressed with great attention to detail. Just look at the shoe laces that tie up around the ankles! The very shoes are special, too. The socks look thick and wooly, and the ribbons poking out create a nice bright spark of color.

Now, where else do you see such interesting leather cutwork on shoes?


There is something about the perfection of these bands. When they are on the field everyone’s competition pour their eyes over them and discuss in great detail any possible shortcomings. Here is a picture of what I assume are members of the competition.

Above are kilted members of another pipe and drum corps.

Here is one last image that shows more about the peculiar details of clothing one can see at a Scottish Festival. Here you can see the ribbons at the back of the hat and the red pom-pom cockade and the metal badge on the left of this man’s hat.

The Oklahoma Scottish Festival  was filled with regimental kilt wearers and in the next blog post I’ll show some of the other dapper and unusual Scotsmen, or should I say Scotspersons?

Colored Money: An Element of Culture

Mixtures or cross-cultural authentication occur when one culture uses elements of another culture’s such as dress. One culture uses elements of another culture’s dress, but does not wholesale start wearing the other’s dress per se. Usually the original is changed to reflect the second culture’s values etc. The user has inadvertently “authenticated” the foreign mode of dress by selecting it or part of it for transfer to their culture. Take a look in the book, The Visible Self: Global Perspectives on Dress, Culture, and Society by Joanne B. Eischer, Sandra Lee Evenson, and Hazel A. Lutz, or the book, Survey of Historic Costume by Phyllis G. Tortora and Keith Eubank. 


This “authentication” through use holds true for all history of décor, dress, architecture and more. For example, the United States now uses colored paper money.

The $20.00 has green and peach on both sides of President Jackson’s portrait. Where the United States used to be well known for its single color bills (green-backs), our $5, $10, $20, and $50 notes now have color. Which countries influenced our monetary icon’s change? China? Egypt? France? What about the Euro? Although the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing made the color changes part of many other security changes to prevent forgeries, the colors alone are cultural authentication of other cultures that use colorful money. Perhaps in this case the designers have not used only one culture’s element of design but several. For a really good look at the paper bills of the United States, go to http://www.newmoney.gov/newmoney/. You'll see that the paper money of the United States is still very sedate compared to the colored money of other countries. The calm colors reflect our values.
 
And to tie it all together in the realm of fashion, Christian Francis Roth (who provided the money dress image) wrote about several money dresses in his blog http://francisnewyork.com/blog/ on August 12 http://francisnewyork.com/blog/2009/08/vintage-cfr-dresses-are-not-a-dime-a-dozen/  In this, he also refers to the money dresses blogged by blogger Couture Carrie. http://couturecarrie.blogspot.com/2009/07/bet-your-bottom-dollar.html . Both are interesting blogs!