What was clothing made of in the 1600's?

Answer 1

People from the Scottish Lowlands (including William Wallace and Robert the Bruce) most likely wore clothing in keeping with contemporary fashions in England and France. No, Wallace didn't wear a kilt; and he certainly didn't wear woad.

The Scottish Highlands were considered a backwater of Europe, and not worth much attention, and consequently there are few descriptions or drawings of what people wore. In addition, few clothing remains have been found. All of this makes reconstructing a workable outfit rather difficult. Even in the later periods, documentation, especially for womens' clothing, is sketchy. At the same time, the Highlands were not absolutely isolated from the clothing trends that affected the rest of Europe, so one does see changes over time -- for example, ca. 1100 sleeves throughout Europe were narrow, and that's what we see in the Rogart Shirt. In the 1500s, wider sleeves were more popular throughout Europe, and one sees a wider sleeve in Irish clothing, too (albeit in a particularly Celtic form).

However, from what little documentation we do have, it seems that the Highland Scots kept fairly close to their Gaelic roots (the Gaels in Scotland originally came from northern Ireland and are not synonymous with the Picts), wearing the two basic components of Gaelic clothing common in Ireland in this same era: the léine and the brat. Additional items of clothing included the inar (also spelled various ways, including ionar), a short jacket, and trews of various length, from full-length trews to something rather like modern shorts, with a length somewhere between the hip and knee. See Ireland, 5th-10th c. AD for a background on the history of Gaelic clothing.

Various claims have been made for the wearing of the kilt (either the breacan feile or belted plaid, or the feilebeg or short kilt) prior to 1600, but I have looked at detailed photographs of the disputed stone carvings and think that this conclusion is insupportable; the garments in question are clearly lÈines hanging in folds or other such garments. H.F. McClintock, widely considered to be the leading authority on the subject, thoroughly discusses and dismissses the possibility of the kilt being worn prior to the late 1500s in his book Old Highland Dress and Tartans