Just plain kilts

[Jock Scot]

I only chose it because I felt it might indicate a view of the kilt as a masculine garment. Usually when I see kilts in advertising used in the UK the wearers are often from manly occupations like soldiers or ghillies. This was just to counter the perception of tartan kilts as “sissy” as mentioned in the OP.

Or putting it another way, the kilt is so decidedly masculine in the perception of the UK, that even portrayed on something as irrelevant as a bottle of drink mix, it is portrayed as the uniform of a soldier.

Maybe I’m off base but that was all I was thinking. Not that camp coffee represents true highland culture or anything.

It’s just a trade label nothing more, nothing less. If it spikes the imagination into action for an individual then, so be it.

[Jock Scot]

I think that we have cultural and generational difference of viewpoint going on here. Both of those general viewpoints and differences of viewpoints are understandable and legitimate. All it needs is understanding from ALL sides.

If we take me as an example. I am from generation where conservative and traditional thinking on kilt matters comes as second nature to me and others here and I/we wear the kilt how I/we do because that is what my/our culture------everyday culture-----leads me/us to do. Its so natural that I/we don't even think about it in normal circumstances and when I am asked to talk about it, on a website such as this, it is extremely difficult to explain. Why? Because, its so natural and such an everyday occurrence to many people in the Highlands(Scotland)that we don't have to think about what we do. AND...... I have been doing it for rather a long time and Scotland has been doing it for a lot longer.

Now we have those new to kilt wearing from all over the world(including parts of Scotland)who are modern thinkers with new ideas and fresh thinking which is naturally more liberal and open minded. These people do not possess traditional thinking, or everyday cultural influences and have a natural urge to be different and question why this, that or the other, but on ----in this case---a modern theme of kilt attire . Because of that, they are quite naturally coming up against their own cultures that know nothing about the kilt and have their own perceptions about things. AND they are coming up against the conservative and traditional thinking Highlander who has never before had to think about why they should even think about what they wear and why.

I really have come to the conclusion after spending quite a bit of time on this website over the years, that modern thinking kilt wearers outwith Scotland might be better off wearing trousers. At least their peers understand those!

[MichiganKyle]

I think that we have cultural and generational difference of viewpoint going on here. Both of those general viewpoints and differences of viewpoints are understandable and legitimate. All it needs is understanding from ALL sides.

If we take me as an example. I am from generation where conservative and traditional thinking on kilt matters comes as second nature to me and others here and I/we wear the kilt how I/we do because that is what my/our culture------everyday culture-----leads me/us to do. Its so natural that I/we don't even think about it in normal circumstances and when I am asked to talk about it, on a website such as this, it is extremely difficult to explain. Why? Because, its so natural and such an everyday occurrence to many people in the Highlands(Scotland)that we don't have to think about what we do. AND...... I have been doing it for rather a long time and Scotland has been doing it for a lot longer.

Now we have those new to kilt wearing from all over the world(including parts of Scotland)who are modern thinkers with new ideas and fresh thinking which is naturally more liberal and open minded. These people do not possess traditional thinking, or everyday cultural influences and have a natural urge to be different and question why this, that or the other, but on ----in this case---a modern theme of kilt attire . Because of that, they are quite naturally coming up against their own cultures that know nothing about the kilt and have their own perceptions about things. AND they are coming up against the conservative and traditional thinking Highlander who has never before had to think about why they should even think about what they wear and why.

I really have come to the conclusion after spending quite a bit of time on this website over the years, that modern thinking kilt wearers outwith Scotland might be better off wearing trousers. At least their peers understand those!

Very artfully and gracefully said. This is part of the reason I do not wear a kilt in a formal setting - I have enough respect for the tradition and (as an American of mixed ancestry in an area dominated by Dutch tradition) have no reference frame for doing it properly and honoring that tradition. You want wooden clogs for traditional Dutch dancing? I could pick you up a pair from a local shop, and have family members who could teach you the music, steps, and correct attire. But I would rather leave the realm of correct kilt wearing to those who can do so properly. I'm a historical preservationist for old mechanical equipment, and in the same way it pains me to see amateurs hacking their way through trying to "preserve" an old radio by gutting it and completely replacing the internals with something that works the same but in no way respects the craftsmanship of the original object, I don't feel it would be appropriate for me to try for the ideal of properly and correctly worn kilted attire at this time. I would rather wear it in a "modernized" casual way where everyone else knows what I'm doing is not trying to imitate what it should be than to try for correct, fail due to lack of reference, and skew peoples' expectations due to having no one else around here wearing kilts. That respect for those traditions (and not wanting to mess them up) is also part of the reason why all of my kilts are currently universal tartans, with the only one with any history to it being my Black Watch kilt. The rest are all modern tartans.

On the other hand, I would rather wear a tartan kilt with a casual button-up than to wear a utility kilt in public because I would rather have a bit of a nod to the correct traditions than to have something that, in my opinion, more or less announces "to heck with the history of this garment".

And that respect for tradition is a large part of why I've only started wearing kilts recently. I've always loved kilts and admired those who wore them. I've looked at them and read about them for years. But I was always intimidated by not wanting to wear them incorrectly. When I discovered people wearing them casually, in a manner that was entirely different than traditional/historical outfits, I figured I could do that. If I felt I had to fully stick to traditions, I probably would have stayed stuck where I was and never have tried on a kilt in the first place. The body of tradition behind it was just too intimidating. I wanted to preserve that and carry it forward, but I didn't think I could ever learn enough to honor that and do it properly. Now? I think someday when I accumulate enough knowledge to have an idea of what to do and how to put things together in a respectful way that honors that tradition, I may someday try wearing more of a traditional kilted outfit in a family tartan. I feel I need to grow a bit first. But casual kilt wearing has changed my mindset from "not a chance, too intimidating" to "I think I'd like to try that someday".

So, I guess where I'm at is that I'd rather stick to the realm of "different enough to not be confused for those with knowledge" with great respect for those who do. And someday I hope to graduate to that. This is all personal opinion and may be a wrong way to think about it. I don't really know. But for now, I'm content with watching the grownups build beautiful skyscrapers and admiring them while I'm playing with Lego and learning what to do.

[Jock Scot]

Very artfully and gracefully said. This is part of the reason I do not wear a kilt in a formal setting - I have enough respect for the tradition and (as an American of mixed ancestry in an area dominated by Dutch tradition) have no reference frame for doing it properly and honoring that tradition. You want wooden clogs for traditional Dutch dancing? I could pick you up a pair from a local shop, and have family members who could teach you the music, steps, and correct attire. But I would rather leave the realm of correct kilt wearing to those who can do so properly. I'm a historical preservationist for old mechanical equipment, and in the same way it pains me to see amateurs hacking their way through trying to "preserve" an old radio by gutting it and completely replacing the internals with something that works the same but in no way respects the craftsmanship of the original object, I don't feel it would be appropriate for me to try for the ideal of properly and correctly worn kilted attire at this time. I would rather wear it in a "modernized" casual way where everyone else knows what I'm doing is not trying to imitate what it should be than to try for correct, fail due to lack of reference, and skew peoples' expectations due to having no one else around here wearing kilts. That respect for those traditions (and not wanting to mess them up) is also part of the reason why all of my kilts are currently universal tartans, with the only one with any history to it being my Black Watch kilt. The rest are all modern tartans.

On the other hand, I would rather wear a tartan kilt with a casual button-up than to wear a utility kilt in public because I would rather have a bit of a nod to the correct traditions than to have something that, in my opinion, more or less announces "to heck with the history of this garment".

And that respect for tradition is a large part of why I've only started wearing kilts recently. I've always loved kilts and admired those who wore them. I've looked at them and read about them for years. But I was always intimidated by not wanting to wear them incorrectly. When I discovered people wearing them casually, in a manner that was entirely different than traditional/historical outfits, I figured I could do that. If I felt I had to fully stick to traditions, I probably would have stayed stuck where I was and never have tried on a kilt in the first place. The body of tradition behind it was just too intimidating. I wanted to preserve that and carry it forward, but I didn't think I could ever learn enough to honor that and do it properly. Now? I think someday when I accumulate enough knowledge to have an idea of what to do and how to put things together in a respectful way that honors that tradition, I may someday try wearing more of a traditional kilted outfit in a family tartan. I feel I need to grow a bit first. But casual kilt wearing has changed my mindset from "not a chance, too intimidating" to "I think I'd like to try that someday".

So, I guess where I'm at is that I'd rather stick to the realm of "different enough to not be confused for those with knowledge" with great respect for those who do. And someday I hope to graduate to that. This is all personal opinion and may be a wrong way to think about it. I don't really know. But for now, I'm content with watching the grownups build beautiful skyscrapers and admiring them while I'm playing with Lego and learning what to do.

Thank you for your well thought out reply . Likewise, your reply is "very artfully and gracefully said".

[MichiganKyle]

Thank you for your well thought out reply . Likewise, your reply is "very artfully and gracefully said".

Thank you.

I think what it comes down to for me is that, up until I discovered this forum, I had no one to teach me. There was certainly an interest, but no good way to know what to do about it. I have seen (in person) precisely zero people wearing a kilt outside of Celtic music festivals and concerts. There is one (somewhat legendary among females around here) roofer in town I know of who wears a utility kilt. I have never seen this person. That's how unusual it is around here.

Some of my favorite posts on here are OC Richard's posts showing old photos and comparing small details of historical kilt wearing. Having that information collected together into one place, and diving into it into such incredible detail, is something I find absolutely fascinating. Especially seeing the variety of things that people wore back in the day just blows my mind.

A great fear of mine with anything with a rich history like traditional Highland wear is that the knowledge will be lost due to gradual waning of interest and losing people who have first-hand knowledge of what's correct. You see it all the time in the world of preserving antique equipment - how do you properly time Stephenson valve gear eccentrics on a steam locomotive? There used to be many people who could. There was active research into new types of valve gear for more efficient operation or easier maintenance, and with a lot of experimentation and math going into figuring all that out. Baker valve gear, Joy valve gear, poppet valves, etc. Now? There are fortunately many written works on the subject, but people with actual hands-on experience are becoming fewer due to old stuff just generally sticking around and working. Often times you see younger folks having to relearn old processes through much trial and error with no one to guide them. Look how much work went into bringing Union Pacific 4014 out of mothballs. How much easier would that have been if people had been as interested when it was retired as they are now? The tools could have been preserved, the knowledge could have been passed down. But because of that knowledge being relegated to an increasingly niche and useless (in a practical sense) status, it degraded and, once there was finally enough interest to do something about it, became a Herculean task to do. They pulled it off, but it took years and wasn't easy. To the point where I have no doubt now that they could build a second one from scratch with the knowledge they gained and tools they had to rebuild.

I think many of these kinds of things need to have some kind of a "hook" for newcomers to sink their teeth into to be able to survive and ultimately thrive. Ham radio got a huge revival due to the cheap (and admittedly not the greatest quality) Baofeng radios. It made it less intimidating for folks with no experience with ham radio to be able to get their feet wet and join the community. And many of them end up graduating to better radios and even full-blown radio research projects over time. I mean, at this point we have people building their own radar imaging devices at home. We have people doing DX long-range low-power digital transmissions and pulling signal out of noise floors that you never would have been able to years ago. Because they got into it and liked it. It's stuff that once would have been unheard of. But without having enough people doing it to keep that alive, those traditions would have been in danger of dying out, the bands reassigned due to lack of use, and the entire field relegated to only those who wanted to do radio in a professional context. That would have been tragic for not only preserving the history of it but also future research and technology development.

Steam power? We've got 1/8 scale steam locomotives that people can build at home and run. We've got the little Jensen stationary engines. But there's a range of stuff from kit builds to full-blown scratch-built replicas.

Machining? Look at all the YouTubers nowadays showing manual machining instead of actual practical-to-modern-use CNC machining. Who'd have thought cheap Chinese mini-lathes would have revived such an old craft to the degree it has. People are nearly perfectly recreating old objects using a mixture of new tools and old methods. It's beautiful, and can be done with folks with tiny spaces for a shop, which you could never do with something like a Monarch lathe. Replicating techniques which would have otherwise been lost to the sands of time due to being looked at as obsolete. It's a wonderful thing to behold.

Antique cars and trucks? The very rare young folks I've seen with antique vehicles generally have inexpensive cars but an incredibly strong passion for keeping them going. If the only thing left for them to do was fix up barn find Duesenbergs in a museum, how many people would we have 40 years from now to do maintenance on the museum equipment?

One of the preservationists I respect the most is a guy who works at Fort Zachary Taylor near Key West, FL. He volunteers as a maintenance guy at the fort. He's a reenactor as a hobby. His "real" job is a dockworker for the cruise ships. He's a very quiet guy and you'd never know he's anything more than a construction worker hired to fix something. To my knowledge, he has zero qualifications for anything historical. He usually works off to the side away from any visitors, because he does not have the official qualifications to be an official historian. But get him talking about any aspect of that fort, and I mean anything, and he'll readily explain stuff to you in detail you'll never see in any book. Want to know about the walls? Sure. How about the hundreds of years of research prior to building them, the resonances in the structure that helped bounce back cannonballs, how everything is buttressed, the ratios of the arches and how that helps with structural stability, how the foundation's built underneath all of it, how it was improved over the years, which stones are from which years, and how that all works together. Where the materials came from. Why the bricks in this area of the fort were made in this particular Northern state and hauled down here instead of the bricks from this other area. The guy is one of the most knowledgeable historians I've ever met. He's an absolute stickler for detail - getting new wood from the same places to match old wood that has no markings as to where it's from, just by digging up forgotten history. He has no qualifications, he's not in management, and he seems to like it that way. It's just out of passion. This is precisely the kind of person we need in historical preservation.

Personally, I'd rather have people using 3D printers and Arduinos to build new equipment mimicking a 40's style than butchering an old piece of equipment for the sake of trying to bring it back to life. I have a huge amount of respect for a good replica. And some of those people will inevitably end up obsessively researching the actual history in the process. Carrying forward the craftsmanship of the originals without destroying them in the process. The fascination with the history and the love of the original can make some of these people excellent historians and some of the better preservationists, eventually.

In the same vain, I'd rather not dilute "proper" Highland wear with my unguided attempts at it. I'd rather wait until I can do it properly, gradually build up a good quality collection of pieces, and be able to explain the "why"s of it if someone asks. I feel it's the only respectful thing to do.

But every journey has to begin with a first step.

[OC Richard]

I am from generation where conservative and traditional thinking on kilt matters comes as second nature to me and others here...it is so natural and such an everyday occurrence to many people in the Highlands that we don't have to think about what we do...

Now we have those new to kilt wearing from all over the world including (other) parts of Scotland who are modern thinkers with new ideas and fresh thinking...These people do not possess traditional thinking, or everyday cultural influences...

Another insightful and thought-provoking post from Jock!

I will say that there perhaps exists a middle ground, such as the one I lived in beginning in 1975 when I moved to Greater Los Angeles. That area had two enormous migrations of Scots, each following a World War.

I quickly became fully involved in the Scottish community: playing in a pipe band, a Strathspey & Reel Society (the first outwith Scotland), doing Scottish Country Dancing 3 or 4 nights a week (the Los Angeles Branch of the RSCDS being the largest in the world at that time) and joining the local branch of a Clan Association.

4 or 5 days a week I was with Scots, as every organisation I mentioned above was run by native-born Scots. Most of the people within these organisations were either Scots or had Scottish-born parents.

The wearing of kilts was commonplace in all these pursuits, and what to wear and how to wear it was modelled by Scots who had worn kilts their entire lives. "Modern thinking" about kiltwearing did not exist.

For one thing, in the 1970s all manner of hyphenated kilts had yet to be invented. There were no casual-kilts or utility-kilts or sports-kilts, only kilts. A kilt was heavyweight wool and had 8 yards and was entirely handsewn to measure. There was no other.

I'm sure that these Scot-centric cultural pockets existed to one degree or another in many places around the world. I met a piper from Brazil who spoke English with a Scottish accent, he explained that he was raised around Scots, and that even now in Rio most of his English speaking was done with Scots. Piping and kiltwearing were as natural to him as his accent.

A note about accents: long exposure to Scots has made me somewhat accent-blind to that accent and specifically to the Glaswegian accent due to most of the people I was in constant contact with being from there. I marvel at people, Americans and British alike, who have difficultly understanding Glaswegians. To me they're simply people talking, I often won't identify that somebody has a Scottish accent even when it's pointed out to me.

More so with "Southern" US accents due to me being originally from West Virginia. Someone will say "you know who I mean, the guy with the Southern accent" and I won't know who is being referenced.

[OC Richard]

About the quite traditional Highland Dress that we all wore here in California in the 1970s when I started kiltwearing, here is the only source most of us had for things Scottish at that time (there being no internet and very few brick-and-mortar kilt shops) the Scottish Shopper catalogue.

Here is their 1978 catalogue. You can see that the jackets, sporrans, etc being sold were virtually unchanged in style from the 1920s and 1930s. These are the things we bought and wore, there was nothing else to buy here. What few shops attended our local Highland Games sold the same things.

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/s...64#post1384164

[OC Richard]

Another plain/selfcoloured kilt gent, a bit unusual in that his kilt and jacket match but his waistcoat does not.

Note the typical Victorian equivalent of a Day Dress sporran, brown-grey hair.

[Crazy Dave]

Socks as spats, interesting!

Dave

[wboydsp]

I am new to kilts. However, I like both the utility kilts of one color and the tartans. I do not see how any of them can be construed as "sissy". i do think that the way one wears a kilt might come off that way. I have decided that since the kilt is traditionally worn from the true waste to the knee, that I would keep to that irregardless of style of kilt that I am wearing. I can see wearing a mini type kilt or one that hangs to the shins as being a bit "sissy", for lack of a better term.