What Should You Wear to Play Hickory Golf?
One of the first questions I’m asked after someone decides they want to take the leap into playing hickory golf is “What do I wear?” This usually comes up when a new hickory golfer wants to play in an event and notices on the registration form that there’s an encouraged period dress code.
Before I delve into the specifics of what I wear to play hickory golf and why, I want to make it clear that you can wear whatever you want to play hickory golf. If you’re not interested in drawing attention to yourself with what what you’re wearing but still want to experience what it’s like to play with antique golf clubs, just wear your usual contemporary golf clothes when you play. That said, if you do decide to start playing in formal hickory golf events, you’ll be the odd looking one if you don’t make an effort to look the part.
The reason for this is many hickory golfers - myself included - find researching, sourcing, and wearing period-accurate clothing to be just as fun as finding and repairing the antique golf clubs we play with. And “dressing the part” when we play is also a great way to initiate a conversation about hickory golf and our love for the history of the game when we show up at a golf course.
It’s a common misconception that in order to look like a hickory golfer, you need to wear baggy knickers, argyle socks, and an oversized newsboy cap. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, this very specific (and sometimes clownish) style is a caricature of what golfers were wearing during a very short time frame toward the end of the hickory golf era in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
For most of the “modern” hickory era (1905-1935), many golfers simply wore trousers, a collared dress shirt, and a necktie tucked into their shirt. True, there were knickers (technically called Plus 4s and Plus 2s depending on their length below the knee), but these were often more tailored to the leg in the style of hunting breeks commonly worn in Scotland and England.
Once you start looking at vintage golf photographs and even paintings, you start to notice the wide variety of options one has to express themselves as a hickory golfer, depending on the era you’re trying to represent. It’s much easier for me to show you this than write about it, though, so I pulled together a detailed video describing why I wear what I wear for the Hickory Hacker YouTube channel:
More Period-Accurate Clothing Information
I hope that video whet your whistle for more detailed information about the clothes worn during the hickory golf era, specifically during the gutty and featherie eras of the 1800s.
As you might expect, the research gets more difficult the further back you go into the game’s history, but Cathy Lane of Hickory Lane Featheries has done an outstanding job outlining what men and women were wearing during the pre-1900 period with a series of articles on the Hickory Lane website. On their blog, you’ll find everything you need to know about hats, ties, pants, and shirts to make sure you’re as period-correct as possible when you show up to your next gutty or featherie event.
My pre-1850 featherie outfit consists of grey trousers, club-collar shirt, black vest, silk tie, and a fiddler’s cap.
