Machine made or hand stitched?

[Alan H]

What do you mean by contemporary? The one I'm planning on getting would be 100% wool tartan.
But I've been to pretty much every shop in Edinburgh city centre, and I haven't seen any that aren't tartan. I guess some of cheaper ones may be made of another material, but theyre still tartan.

I see that you're from Edinburgh, so it's possible that you're not aware of a movement, which I suppose started in the USA in the pacific northwest, where kilts are made from material other than wool tartan.

Utilikilts is what most people think of when they say "contemporary kilt" but Ms. Knome, who posted in this thread, is married to the forum owner, Steve Ashton, who owns Freedom Kilts. Freedom Kilts makes contemporary kilts, primarily out of cotton/polyester twill, but they will also happily make you a kilt with pockets etc. out of very nice tartan.

Amerikilts is another company. Even Scotweb offers a camouflage-material kilt, now. Paul Henry is a kiltmaker in the UK who makes both "contemporary" kilts out of all sorts of material, AND very traditional tartan wool kilts.

A Scottish company (not tartan junk, an actual Scottish-owned company) called Marton Mills makes a range of about 80 tartans in a polyester/viscose blend. It sounds horrid on first hearing, but in fact the material is very nice and the tartans are pretty true to color. They're a bit light, the weight is 11 ounces, whereas most kilting wool is 13 or 16 ounces per yard. The material is teflon-coated so it resists staining and is easily machine-washable. Try THAT with your wool kilt!

Again..."teflon coated".... it sounds dreadful. Trust me, it's not...not at all. I make a lot of kilts for Highland Games athletes and I ALWAYS encourage them to have me make a Marton Mills Polyester-viscose kilt.