Wow, you think after being in this business for 13 years, I would have heard all the insane myths, but nope, every so often a new one comes around that floors me!

The earliest surviving tailored kilt that can be documented is a Gordon regimental kilt c. 1796, which is made from 3 yards, 2 inches of cloth and has 21 box pleats.

A civilian kilt we have in our museum that is from about the same time period (c. 1800), in the MacDuff tartan is made from 4 yards of cloth and has only 6 box pleats.

There also is a Seaforth kilt (MacKenzie tartan) in the Fort William museum from the same general time period (1796-1800) that is made from 3 yards, 29 inches, and has 16 box pleats.

Just one more example; we have a Locheil tartan kilt in our museum from the early 19th century (1800-1820) that has 12 box pleats.

I could give more examples, but this gives a pretty good sampling of some of the earliest tailored kilts, both civilian and military, and you can see the number of pleats varies quite a bit.

Usually when confronted with myths like this, knowing a little bit of history helps a lot!