Uniform
The HLI was the only regular Highland regiment to wear trews for full dress, until 1947 when kilts were authorised. An earlier exception was the Glasgow Highlanders who wore kilts and were a territorial battalion within the HLI. The HLI's full dress of 1914 was an unusual one; comprising a dark green shako with diced border and green cords, scarlet doublet with buff facings and trews of the Mackenzie tartan. Officers wore plaids of the same tartan, while in drill order all ranks wore white shell jackets with trews and green glengarry caps.
The 74th had served for their first fifteen years in India, where the kilt was considered too heavy, and although the regiment resumed it on returning to Scotland in 1806, they lost their Highland dress in 1809, and even the name “Highland” in 1816. When their commanding officer, Colonel Eyre Crabbe, was about to retire in 1845 after 38 continuous years with the regiment, he “submitted to the Commander-in-Chief… the earnest desire of the officers and men to be permitted to resume the national garb and designation of a Highland regiment, under which the 74th had been originally embodied.” The aged Duke of Wellington agreed, but although the regiment had hoped to adopt the full Highland dress of kilt and feathered bonnet, they had to settle for the trews and bonnet which the 71st regiment wore. A painting (by David Cunliffe) of Colonel Crabbe with some of the officers and men was commissioned to mark the return to Highland title and distinctive uniform, and is in the National War Museum of Scotland, in Edinburgh Castle.
Read more about this topic: Highland Light Infantry
Famous quotes containing the word uniform:
“Thus for each blunt-faced ignorant one
The great grey rigid uniform combined
Safety with virtue of the sun.
Thus concepts linked like chainmail in the mind.”
—Thom Gunn (b. 1929)
“Odors from decaying food wafting through the air when the door is opened, colorful mold growing between a wet gym uniform and the damp carpet underneath, and the complete supply of bath towels scattered throughout the bedroom can become wonderful opportunities to help your teenager learn once again that the art of living in a community requires compromise, negotiation, and consensus.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“Iconic clothing has been secularized.... A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)