Women’s Tartan Plaid Accessories

Scarves, sashes, stoles and shawls, hair accessories, brooches, bags and purses. A sash is the specifically Highland piece, worn over one shoulder and pinned at formal events. Everything else carries the sett into ordinary clothes without any occasion attached to it.

Convention says the right shoulder for most women wearing their own or their husband's clan tartan, pinned at the right and falling across to the left hip. Clan chiefs' wives and women in a few specific roles wear it on the left. Nobody at a wedding will correct you, but the right shoulder is the usual answer.

A tartan scarf. It carries the full sett at a visible scale, costs a fraction of a garment, works over ordinary clothes and needs no occasion. If you want your family tartan and nothing more, that is where almost everyone should start rather than with a skirt.

Premium acrylic woven to the sett for the fabric pieces, with genuine leather trim on bags and purses and chrome or antique finished metal on brooches and pins. The tartan is woven rather than printed, so both faces show the same pattern and there is no wrong side on a scarf or sash.

With a brooch at the shoulder, through both the sash and the garment beneath so the weight is carried properly. The sash falls diagonally across the back to the opposite hip. Pin it before you check the drape, then adjust the fall rather than the pin, since repositioning leaves marks in the cloth.

Width and how they are worn. A sash is narrow, worn over one shoulder and pinned, and is the formal Highland piece. A stole is wider and draped across both shoulders. A shawl is wider again and wraps the upper body. Only the sash carries any convention about which shoulder.