Fashion Plays With Plaid

Ever since Queen Victoria made plaid a part of fashion, draping checked fabrics over herself and over the furnishing of the newly acquired Balmoral Castle, the British royal family has continued to treat tartan as a fashion extra.

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Just days before her pregnancy was announced, the Duchess of Cambridge wore the Black Watch tartan fitted coat designed by Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen during a visit to her alma mater. Prince William and his bride are not only alumni of St. Andrew’s University in Scotland, they also have the titles of Earl and Countess of Strathearn. It was that clan’s check scarf that the former Kate Middleton wore on the rain-soaked flotilla for Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in the summer. When the Duke of Cambridge was honored as Knight of the Thistle, the Duchess carried the folded Strathearn tartan scarf.

But tartan has had a more checkered fashion career than just the squares on which the patterns are founded. Vivienne Westwood commandeered plaid as a uniform for the Punk era at the end of the 1970s. And tartan has remained part of street style and a fabric with an aggressive twist.

For the winter 2012 season, the effect is more stylish than rakish, with plaid coats serving their long-held purpose to brighten up a cold-weather wardrobe. Designers often choose tartan for outerwear, but it also appears as narrow pants, tailored jackets and, in these days of digital prints, as a mix of geometric squares overlaid for a visually dramatic effect.

Queen Victoria might well have twirled round the Balmoral ballroom in a tartan gown. And that initiative has been followed by designers who are using the print of plaid on fabrics not associated with the usual weave.

New, too, are clash-of-the-tartans accessories, with the shoe supremo Christian Louboutin producing plaid platform soles, bold boots and purses similar in design to the Scottish sporran.