Quote Originally Posted by Jock Scot View Post
I suspect the piper is doing his best with the hose that he was issued with. However, from my civilian Scots point of view his hose tops are at a perfect height. This idea that the hose tops should end at, or just a tad below the bottom of the knee cap seems to be a modern idea and to my mind looks dreadful. I wonder and I suspect that much of the modern kilt hose are made longer these days?
Yes, I quite agree that he is doing his best with the hose he has. The point of my posting was to show that, in order to get his hose tops at the proper height, he has had to do violence to the argyll pattern and make the cuffs much narrower than they would be on properly fitting hose. Obviously, if he had turned down the cuffs to where they were intended to be, i.e. wide enough to continue the pattern, the hose would have looked ridiculously short on him. I fully agree that many kilt wearers nowadays wear their hose far too high (and their kilts too long), but that's not the problem with the Balmoral piper's hose.