Is this attainable or not?

December 22, 2010 2:02 PM

[Scottishfilter] Does anyone know where I can purchase a Scottish mail sweater (I guess it would be Scottish postal pullover to some)? Mr. Shaarog wanted one for Christmas but I have had zero luck finding anything about them on the Internet.

He says it is red and blue and has some sort of button (?) on the shoulder. I can only assume it is some sort of sweater worn by postal carriers in Scotland but as stated, I cannot find any resourse. Is he SOL?

posted by shaarog to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (6 answers total)

This doesn't sound familiar to me, as someone who lives in Scotland and sees postmen reasonably often. I think also that postal uniforms have always been the same across the UK (it's the Royal Mail), without anything distinctive for Scotland.

I'm having trouble thinking of many particularly distinctively Scottish sweaters - the classic is the Fair Isle, but that doesn't have any decoration on the shoulder.

Without the red bits the description sounds like a Royal Navy wooly pully - perhaps he's thinking of two different pulleys, and amalgamating the two?
posted by Coobeastie at 2:28 PM on December 22, 2010

All UK postal workers are working for the Royal Mail, that might help with searching. It looks like this site has some elements of the uniform, some are marked as Royal Mail some as UK Postal so searching by Royal Mail and alternatively by Postal should enable you to pick out the different bits of unifrom to see if they have what you want.
posted by biffa at 2:29 PM on December 22, 2010

This?
posted by biffa at 2:32 PM on December 22, 2010

I live in Scotland, and I have never heard of such a thing. Like Coobeastie, my first thought was of a military jumper - with the exception of the red bits, it's almost exactly like the jumper my father wore as part of his RAF uniform.

I'm having trouble thinking of any famously Scottish sweater that would fit, but perhaps it's something made by Pringle or Johnston's?

The current Royal Mail uniform is a light-blue shirt with a red jacket, and while I can't remember what the old uniform looked like, old Postman Pat episodes make me think that it didn't involve anything that looked like what you describe.

Whilst there are no pictures, the Postal Heritage site offers a PDF file with descriptions of the varying Royal Mail uniforms throughout history here - do any of those sound right?

Do you know where/when he may have heard of it or seen it?
posted by Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo at 2:54 PM on December 22, 2010

Response by poster: On Christmas eve when I give him the present I did buy him I will ask where he saw what he discribed. Thanks for all the confirmations that my Google-fu was correct - it probably does not exist!
posted by shaarog at 3:37 PM on December 22, 2010

I Goldberg has Royal Mail stuff pretty often in their military surplus section.
posted by sepviva at 3:44 PM on December 22, 2010