Word of the Week: Ghillie

Ghillie: A sportsman's attendant or guide. Also spelled gillie. From Scottish Gaelic gillie: a boy or servant.

By extension, a ghillie is also a lace-up shoe of the type worn by Scottish and Irish dancers...

Source: Amazon.

...and comfort seekers...

Source: Zappos.

...and fetishists.

Source: Rosa Shoes.

But when you Google "ghillie," the first and most abundant results are for ghillie suit, a type of camouflage worn for centuries by hunters, soldiers and, more recently, paintball enthusiasts.

Source: SniperGhillies ("Si, Hablamos Español!")

Any resemblance to Chewbacca, a Yeti, or Birnham Wood come to Dunsinane is probably intentional.

My favorite take on the ghillie suit is this artist's interpretation, a colorful homage to IKEA (video).

BldgBlog, a serious blog about architecture and landscape, recently published a post about ghillie suits that includes many wonderful photos and this rumination:

Whatever you might think of wildlife slaughter ... how unbelievably interesting would it be to get Ghillie suit designers, deep wilderness hunters, and some landscape theorists together for a long afternoon of spatialized discussions. Throw in some anthropologists studying hunter-gatherer tribes and maybe some military camouflage field testers – and, at the very least, you've got yourself an interesting book proposal.

My thanks to graphic designer, illustrator, and fine artist Susan Bercu, who discovered the Urban Camouflage video and introduced me to the wide world of ghillie suits.

Comments

[Karen]

We called all ladies' fancy tie-up shoes "ghillies" growing up.

[Nancy Friedman]

@Karen: Could that be a regional usage? I've been aware of ghillies since my early teens, but always as a style distinct from, say, an oxford. (The ghillie lacks a tongue.)