Wearing A Kilt On Halloween

[Tobus]

Once again it's interesting to hear Highland Dress placed in the wider notion of cultural appropriation and cultural stereotypes.

For a good chunk of my youth I wore cowboy boots, jeans, and a cowboy hat as my everyday dress. Many people wear Western Wear as a matter of course. It strikes me as odd to see such ordinary clothes treated as "costume".

Now we're getting down to the crux of the matter! That is precisely what makes a "costume" in this particular context: the wearing of clothing that represents a character, group, ethnicity, lifestyle, or profession that isn't part of one's normal life or cultural background; it's dressing up in someone else's style of clothing. As a Texan, I can (and do) wear jeans, boots, and a cowboy hat and it's just regular clothing like many people around here wear. And in fact, for some of my activities, it would be odd not to wear it. A chap in Germany, with no ties to US western culture, could wear the same thing but it would be a "costume" if it's not the clothing he regularly wears. Everybody's clothing is a "costume" to someone else around the world.

The kilt is one of the world's most recognisable garments which teeters perilously on the edge of costumery. This is the reason so many people question the wearer's motive or background when they see it being worn in public. They need to make sense of it, and their question (in whatever form it takes) is to determine whether it's being worn as a costume or for a "legitimate" (in their view) reason.