Who can wear your Scottish tartan?

Answer 1

Anyone can wear any tartan there is no legal restriction on anything. No one in the UK would produce a Balmoral tartan for anyone other than the Royal Family and there is the odd "personal" tartan that the manufacturers wont make without that persons permission or is patented but apart from that there are no restrictions. Socially/Morally people might question wearing a military tartan when you haven't served in the regiment or wearing a clan tartan when you don't belong to that family name but it depends on the company you mix in if this will cause any offense and how you handle it. It is always possible to join a modern clan society even if you don't share the name. If you still feel uncomfortable about wearing a clan tartan there are so many general and district tartans amongst the thousands you should find something. Some pipe bands who will have a mixture of people including non Scots will wear the same tartan and generally have the courtesy to ask the Clan Chief's permission. It is however a courtesy there is a myth that only the Clan Chief can give permission but the majority of tartans do not "belong" to anyone and there is no copyright on them. Historically there was no such thing as a clan tartan it is an invention of the early 19th century. Originally tartans were produced in an area or district and anyone wore them, they did not denote a clan. In battle a sprig/ribbon/flower was worn in the bonnet to denote which side you belonged to, highlanders wore whatever they liked. Wilsons the first modern manufacturer after Culloden used to number their tartans or call them after districts. Americans and Canadians in particular seem to want to trace back their ancestry to a romanticised view of the clan and pay reverence to the Clan Chief forgetting it was his ancestors who probably cleared their ancestors off the land! See the related question on Tartans for more info and links to the Tartan sites.