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Argyle – you probably think of argyle socks and sweaters when you hear the name, but there’s no reason to limit its usage to only those sorts of things when there’s a diversity of argyle designs. An argyle pattern is made of diamonds or lozenges, with overlapping motifs that typically contain an overlay of intercrossing diagonal lines on solid diamonds.

You’ve seen it on the tartan hose that Scotsmen wear with kilts, on old golf costumes, and on numerous pairs of socks. We must say that the pattern has lent itself to a wider variety of uses in recent years, everything from leggings to kinesiology tape.

History of National Argyle Day

The argyle pattern comes from the tartan of Clan Campbell, which originated in Argyll in western Scotland. While this pattern was used by members of Clan Campbell for kilts and plaids, the argyle pattern has been worn in the form of patterned socks by various clans in Scotland from the 17th century.

After WWI, the pattern became popular first in Britain and then in the United States because of its association with the Duke of Windsor. The Duke used the argyle pattern for his golf clothing, incorporating it for both his jerseys as well as the long socks that were commonly used as part of golf costumes during that period. Since then, argyle has been adopted by other golf enthusiasts. Today it’s considered “preppy”.

One National Argyle Day celebration seems to be the brainchild of Richard Fletcher, but that particular National Argyle Day does not fall on the same date that the holiday seems to be celebrated in other circles. In other words, some people think argyle is awesome (which we won’t dispute) and so we have National Argyle Day.

However, there’s no official date on which every observance occurs, so this one remains a mystery in its origins. As such, it’s hard to tell if National Argyle Day is even the same holiday as National Argyle Day. So we’re just going to tell you instead that you should wear argyle in celebration without forcing you to pick one day out of the year. Heck, you could just observe every National Argyle Day that you come across.

How to celebrate National Argyle Day

The most obvious method of celebrating Argyle day would be for us to tell you to wear argyle patterned clothing. You could go for a more traditional argyle sweater or a pair of argyle socks, but there’s no reason that you can’t be more creative and/or find something else that’s cute. If you knit or crochet, all the better because then you can play host to an argyle-knitting party, where you call up all of your friends and make things with argyle patterns.

Or if you’re feeling a bit more adventurous and cake decoration is more your thing, then we suggest decorating a cake with an argyle pattern. Of course, you can also make argyle cupcakes or even an argyle cheesecake. The point is that argyle is a particular pattern you really could incorporate anywhere that you wish.

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