This at first seemingly unremarkable piece of cloth was found during peat cutting in Glen Affric in the Scottish Highlands. It is the earliest example of a woven checked cloth made with at least two different coloured yarns using woad and madder dyes, which at the time were found in Scotland.

This portrait of Laird Mungo Murray is the earliest to depict anyone in Highland dress. It presents the young laird’s status through elaborate, fashionable draping of his breacan an fheilidh or belted plaid of a complex tartan pattern. His dress contrasts with the attendant ghillie in the background who dons another mode of Highland dress – the trews – traditionally worn for sporting activities. Invited guests to the Highlands were expected to emulate their host’s idealised image as sealgair sithne or hunter of deer.

During the 1745-46 Jacobite rising, stylised tartan checks on everyday items represented subtle or polite expressions of rebellion while socialising with like-minded company. Garters, pincushions and watch ribbons bearing slogans and imagery ‘daubed with plaid and crammed with treason’ caused alarm to the authorities in Manchester, where they were manufactured.

The Vestiarium Scoticum is probably the most influential and controversial book on clan tartans ever published, apparently transcribed from the authors’ discovery of medieval manuscripts. John and Charles Allen were nicknamed ‘the Sobieski Stuarts’ after their claimed descendance from the exiled Jacobite Charles Edward Stuart. Despite criticisms at the time, including from Sir Walter Scott, the tartans proved popular. Although now regarded as a forgery due to variations between the manuscript, transcriptions and published work, many of its tartans remain in use today.

The watercolour shows the extent to which tartan was used in the interior design of Balmoral, on carpets, table coverings and upholstery. These interiors were then emulated in estate houses across Scotland.

Tartan interiors have continued to be popular since their use at Balmoral, used to signify warmth, traditional values and seclusion from the outside world.

Together with photographer Thomas Sutton, in 1861 the physicist James Clerk Maxwell chose a tartan ribbon to prove his revolutionary theory that all colours in the spectrum could be reproduced using only red, green and blue light. The tri-colour grids of tartan allowed the visual separation and reunion of these ‘RGB’ primary colours. Although only visible for a fleeting moment, their experiment laid the foundation for colour imaging, television and digital visual media.

Almost 75 years later Spencer used Maxwell’s original red, green and blue filters and the corresponding black and white positive slides to create this now iconic image.

The Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, was well-known both for his fashionable dress and for wearing tartan. This suit was originally worn by the Duke’s father, King George V, but retailored by his son. This suit is mentioned both in the memoirs of the Duke of Windsor and his wife, the Duchess of Windsor. The Duke even cited the suit as the reason tartan became fashionable in the USA although as explored in ‘Tartan and Identity: Americana’, tartan was already well-established in popular fashions.

The kilt ensemble was worn by Wallis, Duchess of Windsor. Like her husband the Duke of Windsor, she was renowned for her fashionable dress and use of tartan. The ensemble showcases how tartan has been used and worn by the British royal family for both diplomatic and sartorial reasons.

This kilt was worn by Private James Calder, 1st Battalion, Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders, at the Battle of Aubers Ridge on 9 May 1915. This disastrous battle claimed the lives of hundreds of his comrades. Calder was lucky to survive but in April 1916 returned home injured and ‘no longer physically fit for service’. This kilt is a poignant reminder of the tragedy he witnessed and endured. It was kept in his family unwashed and donated to the Highlanders Regimental Museum as a testament to the horrors of war.

The marriage of American socialite and fashion journalist Frances Farquharson to the Laird of Invercauld in 1949 resulted in some of the most impressive reinterpretations of traditional Highland garments. An avid supporter of the local woollen industry, she commissioned tartan outfits suited to her sartorial taste, flair and new-found clan identity. The use by designer Elsa Schiaparelli of tartan in her collections was probably inspired by her visits to her friend Frances’ home, Braemar Castle.

Weaver Willie Meikle worked from his home at Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire. He inherited the loom of his great-grandfather, who was one of over 800 weavers during Kilbarchan’s manufacturing heyday from about 1820 to 1860.

In 1938 Meikle was invited to demonstrate his craft at the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park and in 1949 at the Toronto Fair. He kept a sample of every tartan that he wove, a small selection of which is displayed here. Meikle’s 200-year-old handloom is still in use today in the Weaver’s Cottage at Kilbarchan, now cared for by the National Trust for Scotland.

Like the kilt itself, the origins of the tartan dinner jacket that took America by storm in the 1940s and 1950s are hotly debated. Aspirational Ivy League students purchased their tartan tuxedos and slacks from university outfitters and shops like Rogers Peet, founded in the 1870s and Chipp Inc, founded in the 1940s. Increased leisure time and the demand for more casual clothing meant brands like Rabhor Robes, based in New York’s Empire State Building, became renowned for their plaid loungewear and smoking jackets.

Dutch architect and Benedictine monk Dom Hans van der Laan compared the weaving of tartan to the construction of buildings. He drew parallels in the relationship between block, column and wall to fibre, thread and cloth. Tartan was instrumental in his building designs and then adopted as a key instructional tool for architecture students at the Bossche School, of which he was a founding member.

Van der Laan’s studies of tartans, namely Grey Douglas, demonstrated how the different widths of their coloured stripes can behave like the background and foreground in architectural plans. Van der Laan also applied the tartan grid to theoretical city designs, although he admitted such a perfect plan could never be built, but instead it would bend to the landscape and environment just as ‘tartan is subjected to the falling fold of the outfit [on the body].’

Tartan’s travels have taken it into space and other imagined worlds. Alan Bean, crew member of the US Apollo 12 mission, took a piece of tartan to the Moon. Tartan’s ability to transcend time and space also makes it the fabric of science fiction and time travel.

The artist Donald Judd was fascinated by the symmetrical construction of textiles. These included Turkish rugs which he installed in his New York studio and the tartans which he loved to wear.

In this series of prints, each framed sett rationalises the tartan grid to its essentials of colour and lines, fragmenting tartan into building blocks. Although flat, these prints employ the idea of warp and weft to create the perception of depth. The blocks of colour occupy negative space while the white creates positive space.

The kilt ensemble in Westwood’s own modified Red Anderson fashion tartan encapsulates the designer’s punk edginess coupled with attention to fine tailoring. The total use of tartan for the whole outfit also pays homage to the fashions of the Highland revival period from about 1760 to 1850.

The first furniture collection by designers Precious McBane (Evelyn Smith and Meriel Scott) referenced the surrealism of Balmorisation. Their Tartan Tales series, which launched the company in 1994, included a chest of drawers, bureau and this remarkable dressing table all fully ‘dressed’ in tartan.

These three garments, each in McQueen’s own family sett, express the designer’s attempt to reclaim some of tartan’s most painful associations. The top, from McQueen’s Highland Rape collection, commemorates the suffering inflicted by English landlords on Scottish Highlanders. It was made for McQueen’s stylist Katy England. The outfit from Widows of Culloden was made as if for a grieving Jacobite widow. The dress from Joan is dedicated to Catholic martyrs Mary, Queen of Scots and the French Joan of Arc.

This portrait depicts Scottish actor, writer and cabaret performer Alan Cumming wearing a kilt around his neck. Cumming is well known for speaking and writing on his bisexuality and politics, and the kilt is made of the official Yes Scottish independence referendum tartan. Christian Hook describes the kilt in this painting as 'a sexual object...with a kind of dominance and passiveness, changing the way a kilt is seen’.

Violet Chachki emphasised tartan’s duality in this show-stopping ‘tartan eleganza’ winning look in Season Seven of US television’s RuPaul’s Drag Race. Chachki unbuckled the black sequinned gown to reveal a tartan spangled jumpsuit, accessorised with matching gloves and baseball cap complete with attached hair extension. Declaring ‘I’m giving you tartan eleganza… Being able to serve two looks in one is a talent!’ this is a testament not only to tartan’s centrality to couture fashion and streetwear, but also its ability to project multiple meanings and identities.

Charles Jeffrey uses his distinctive LOVERBOY tartan, inspired by the red, blue and black make-up he wore when hosting his regular club nights, to challenge gender norms and stereotypes. Since its first appearance in his 2018 Tantrum collection, LOVERBOY tartan has been constantly reinvented to mirror fluid performances of identity. A protective, metallicized version, which he calls Tartanium, was used to make this gender-neutral smock dress for his 2022 collection.

Bridging the immersive virtual and real worlds of video gaming, the Xbox tartan celebrates the close-knit community of gamers who refer to each other as clans. It was commissioned to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the video game console’s launch in Scotland. This tartan is an innovative example of weaving, using only single threads to create a digital pixelated effect for the tartan sett.