Starting another kilt belt... have questions

[Tobus]

I've built myself a couple of kilt belts with double buckles on the front, but I want to build another that's more traditional with the buckle. I bought a Saltire motif belt buckle from Paul and will be using it for a standard 2-1/2" wide belt.

What I'm wondering is how 'fancy' a kilt belt should get before it's just too much.

See, while I'm mostly just a hobbyist when it comes to leatherworking, my wife does it for a living. She is by all definitions a master tooler and saddlemaker. She specializes in Sheridan-style tooling, which you can see below on a saddle she built for herself:



She designs all her own patterns, does all the casing, carving, tooling, dyeing, airbrushing, antiquing, finishing, and whatever else. Everything she does is a custom job. She designed, tooled, and built me a custom briefcase for my laptop computer (with built-in holster!) that I proudly carry every day. But she's never done anything kilt-related, as most of her business is saddles, chaps, bridles, purses, canteen covers, and the typical 'western' stuff. She built one Celtic pattern tooled saddle, but that's it.

Anyway, I want her to build and tool a kilt belt for me that is tooled and decorated. She made an amazing gun belt a while back that had a nice large tooling pattern on the back but the rest was just basket-stamped and decorated with "spots", or silver studs:



She really loves using spots on things, and I like the look. I'm thinking about a Sheridan-style tooling job on the kilt belt, probably dyed a dark brown like the gun belt, and decorated with some spots, although not as many as the gun belt had. If that's too over-the-top, maybe the tooling would just be a custom Celtic knot pattern around the sides with maybe a simple thistle tooled in the back. And maybe only a couple of spots; perhaps 4 spots to "frame" around the thistle at the back as a simple accent.

But would this just be too gaudy for a kilt belt? I know it's certainly not "traditional". I'm just wondering what you would think if you saw a nicely dressed kilted fellow with a belt like that. Would you think it was over the top? Or would it be a nicely stated accent?

I don't want to ask her to go to all the trouble to make this if it's something that'll be grossly overstated. But at the same time, I have seen many kilt belts with some stamping/tooling/embossing on them, so I know there's got to be a balance in there somewhere.