Only one of my 5 kilts was made to measure by a fitting in a shop (Wm Glen & Son, in SF, CA, USA. As I recall, it fit well the few times I wore it in 2016 and 2017 before being consumed in the Sonoma County, CA "Tubbs" wildfire, along with everything else I owned. All but one of those acquired more recently were made based on online measuring instructions. Every single one of them, and especially the 3 made from heavyweight (16 oz) fabric, have an irrepressible urge to migrate "south," even to the point of falling to my ankles.

Hence, every one of them is fitted with waistband buttons for suspenders. Of course, almost no one wears suspenders any more, even with trousers, so when I show up at my favorite seamstress asking for them to be placed on a new kilt, NEITHER of us knows really where the buttons should be placed. What seems right is to "plant" the buttons for the pleated section directly in its middle. For no reason I'm aware of, we've chosen to plant the buttons for the front straps on the under apron.

I found one other discussion here about wearing braces/suspenders with a kilt, and it included a few photos of gents doing so just with a shirt (no jacket or waistcoat), but it seems that's not a popular "look." So, in summer, I hide the suspenders behind a waistcoat and skip the jacket if I'm to be outdoors in the heat, and in winter for casual daywear I'll hide them beneath an Aran sweater.

I'm old (78) WAS too fat, and I have diabetes, so one non-garment attempt I made to improve this was to lose almost 30 pounds, telling my personal physician I wanted to improve my diabetic management, so needed to switch from DM Rx (metformin) that does a LOUSY job of promoting weight loss to treatment that does (semaglutide, branded as Ozempic, which now drives the entire Danish economy). Even that plus moving the straps hasn't helped.

Riff on just how common this dilemma is in the US: I'm a retired specialist physician. Most medical specialties have professional societies that hold annual meetings, commonly in upscale hotels, and those meetings typically include a ceremonial dinner in a hotel ballroom where friends who haven't seen each other for a year group themselves at tables that seat 8-12 people. This year, the VERY common realization as those people look at each other is that many, many of them are SMALLER than a year ago, and also that far more of the dinner plates are taken back to the kitchen still bearing a good bit of the food that was presented on them than was the case in previous years.

Is the best solution to this sartorial dilemma just to travel back to SF or Edinburgh to have in-person measurements made in the kilt shop? Or just give up and wear the braces?