The cornish kilt

[Pleater]

A lot depends on your definition of authentic.

If you wear a black kilt with tee shirt sandals and a brimmed leather hat in some parts of the UK you will be asked if you are a member of the mebyon kernow, or at least are from the West. The association of the black kilt and Cornwall are beyond living memory, but I would not declare it a traditional garment.

The evidence for the kilt in carvings or other depictions of men in older times could be misleading, as there was a style of doublet with cartridge pleated fabric attached to a yoke to form the skirts and sleeves which could be interpreted as a smock or shirt beneath a high rise kilt.

The highest in the land would have their doublets made from gold and silk brocade, but just possibly the lower orders would have shaped their garments to follow the style even if they did not have the swanky fabrics to make them from.

A cartridge pleat, flattened down is a box pleat, the doublet was knee length, and there are portraits of men wearing kilts with the pleats all round.

Short of obtaining a time machine or finding the journal of some one working as a fashion guide to the fifteenth century I don't think that the origins of the kilt will be discovered - what people wore in the courts and great houses might have been mentioned, though probably more in the 'these yokels wear garments styled some two decades out of date and think themselves attired a la mode' style than an actual description of the garments.

Having a passing interest in costume through the ages, I find it so infuriating that no one ever thought that in a couple of hundred years someone might really want to know just what was so amusing about the garments worn by a particular set of families, or so hideous about the clothes of the village maidens that they were commented on in letters and journals.

Anne the Pleater :oodt: