Rainbow (Fashion)
This is one variant — a specific cloth: this exact thread count and colourway, with its own provenance below. It is one weaving of the sett (the scale-free proportion — the same cloth at any scale or shade), whose colour order is pattern BBRYGG.
Part of the Rainbow tartan — the named design grouping this sett with its other cloths.
Sourced from tartans-authority. It is a 6 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=2647
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 1999 — Rainbow (Fashion) (tartans-authority, record)
The registration of this Ronnie Helk design reputed to be especially for the Gay (homosexual) community, caused quite a stir in the conventional Scottish Tartans Society and reputedly resulted in a dismissal. See also Rainbow #2. STA would not accept a tartan for recording with the same name as an existing one but weavers and designers often don't bother checking prior to naming a new tartan and the STA is presented with a fait accompli as in this case when the Rainbow tartan from Aljean of Canada predates it by some 25 years. Count doubled for display purposes. Excerpt from a website retailer: "Tartan is one of the trendiest fabrics around but did you know there's a plaid specially designed for the gay community? Called Rainbow tartan, the pattern was created to incorporate the colours of the rainbow - the gay community's adopted symbol - and is now available in a variety of garments and gifts." Aljean - women's clothes retailer in Vancouver Canada traded under Aljean name from 1950-2012. - 01/09/2000 — Rainbow (Gay Community) (register-of-tartans, record)
The registration of this Ronnie Hek design reputed to be especially for the Gay (homosexual) community, caused quite a stir in the conventional Scottish Tartans Society and reputedly resulted in a dismissal. Scottish Tartans Authority would not accept a tartan for recording with the same name as an existing one but weavers and designers often don't bother checking prior to naming a new tartan and the Scottish Tartans Authority is presented with a fait accompli as in this case when the Rainbow tartan from Aljean of Canada predates it by some 25 years. Count doubled for display purposes. Excerpt from a website retailer: 'Tartan is one of the trendiest fabrics around but did you know there's a plaid specially designed for the gay community? Called Rainbow tartan, the pattern was created to incorporate the colours of the rainbow - the gay community's adopted symbol - and is now available in a variety of garments and gifts.'
Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
- source
- Scottish Tartans Authority
- data captured from
- https://github.com/thetartan/tartan-database/blob/master/data/tartans-authority/data.csv
- data date
- 1999 (this record)
- licence
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Capture chain — the hands this data passed through, oldest first; each capture carries its own licence
- Scottish Tartans Authority
the heritage body's archive — its tartan-ferret record browser is retired (links repaired to the SRT, above) - thetartan/tartan-database 2016-2017 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Levko Kravets's frozen compilation — the capture we vendored, and where its CC licence text came from - this dictionary captured 2026-06-10 · commit 5bf86c7566
each re-capture is a git commit to data/sources
Register references
External register numbers recorded for this tartan.
- Scottish Register of Tartans: 3445
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 2647
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 2647
Thread count
G/72 Y36 LO36 R36 DP36 DB/36
One full sett is 396 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| DB | #082077 #082077 | oklch(30.0% 0.149 265.1) |
| G | #008B2A #008B2A | oklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9) |
| LO | #FF9C34 #FF9C34 | oklch(77.9% 0.161 61.8) |
| DP | #4B0B4F #4B0B4F | oklch(30.1% 0.125 325.4) |
| R | #D60020 #D60020 | oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5) |
| Y | #8B6E00 #8B6E00 | oklch(55.1% 0.113 90.4) |
Sample pattern
Nearest tartan variants
The nearest existing variants by ΔTartan distance, with this cloth at the top so the swatches line up against it.
Neighbour map
Every grey dot is one of 13621 variants placed by the first two principal components of the ΔTartan feature space (42% of its variance). Red is this tartan; blue dots are its nearest — click one to open its page.
ID: /variants/s6/g2y1lo1r1dp1db1~x36/