Fraser Tartans
Most clan have numerous tartans, which can be confusing to the newcomer.
The basics
Dress and hunting, ancient and modern
Tartans normally divide into two families: dress setts, which are largely red-based, and hunting setts of greens and browns chosen for camouflage. Most clans then have an ancient and a modern version of each.
Beyond those, most major branches of the clan evolved their own variants of colour and check over the centuries — and new Fraser tartans are still being introduced. Because every mill dyes slightly differently, almost every kilt is subtly unique, the older ones most of all.
The Scottish Register of Tartans lists many Fraser patterns: tartanregister.gov.uk.
In practice
What does the chief wear?
Lord Lovat, his uncle the Hon. Kim Fraser and their cousins wear, for the most part, the Modern Fraser Dress tartan.
The green kilt in the photograph is not Fraser but Mackay: Shimi Lovat's daughter Tessa married the chief of Clan Mackay, Lord Reay, and their second son Edward appears here.
Tartan as an organised clan system is younger than the romance around it suggests. It required specialised weaving, organised communities and mass production — and in the Lowlands it was only adopted in the family sense from the mid-eighteenth century, ironically encouraged by the 1747 Act that sought to abolish tartan altogether.
The early records
Tartan before 1600
Other than the two specimens discussed earlier, there are few surviving records of tartan in Scotland before 1600. The early records are fragmentary and often translations of Latin text with descriptions such as striatis (striped) and veriedatae(variegated) often being inferred to as meaning checkered. Interpretation of older texts is further complicated by the fact that ‘tartan’ was also used to refer to a type of material commonly called linsey-woolsey. Thus, the mention in 1538 in the Lord High Treasurer's accounts for James V of ‘iii elnis of Heland tartane to be hoiss to the Kingis Grace’ could have been a reference to the pattern or the type/quality of the cloth.
It would be another century before reliable reference to tartan can be identified. The print of Scottish soldiers in service of Gustavus Adolphus in the Low Countries, 1631 shows what is clearly meant to represent Highland Dress and tartan but this was probably produced from a second-hand account rather than from life.