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Ethnic dress is usually stringently defined as a particular set of clothes produced and worn by a specific set of people and their descendants. It is an instantly recognizable visual representation of their culture and their heritage. This is no less true of Scottish tartan and kilts, but Scottish dress today is worn by groups as diverse as the Scottish people and their descendants and cosplayers who are fans of the television show, Outlander. Yet wearing of Scottish dress is no less an expression of these cosplayers' identity. The world-wide appeal of a Romantic Scotland can be traced to Sir Walter Scott's Waverley. Through a brief history of the invention of traditional Scottish dress by Scott and others and through interviews with a diverse range of people who wear Scottish dress this article will show that Scottish or Scottish-inspired dress is unique in that it not only represents a culture and history, but that it is malleable enough to enable a vast array of people to use it to communicate or even subsume their identities in the broader world. KEYWORDS tartan Scottish dress ethnic dress identity cosplay historical re-enactment, By the light which the fire afforded Waverley could discover that his attendants were not of the clan of Ivor, for Fergus was particularly strict in requiring from his followers [...]