"Viking Style" Brouge lacing?

[Tobus]

The issue isn't rules, but common sense.

I agree to some extent, but there are certain parts of Highland dress where common sense doesn't fully explain how to wear the thing without some context. This is why so many people put the pleats to the front. Their "common sense" tells them that it would be reasonable to sit on the flat part and have the swishy bits in front where your knees move. They just don't know any better, and the garment itself doesn't have an obvious front or back if one doesn't know which is which.

With ghillie brogue laces, I suspect that a large part of the issue here is the usual culprit: the kilt hire industry. They seem to take standard/traditional parts of the wardrobe and push them to the extreme. This is how we get flashes dangling halfway to one's ankles, ghillie laces up over the calf, kilts hanging below the knee, and those ridiculous rouche ties. I still haven't figured out whether the hire industry does this on purpose for some sense of "fashion forward" style, or if it's just run by people who can't tell the difference between proper and improper ways of wearing these items. Some part of it may be that these items are made in (and marketed from) places like Pakistan where they don't have the same cultural history of wearing the kilt. We can look at photos of Pakistani pipe bands to see how their way of wearing Highland wear has strayed significantly from Scottish tradition. This is not meant as any sort of slight, but it is clear that wearing the kilt in Pakistan is very much different than how it's worn in the Highlands. Some of this difference may be feeding back into the kilt industry and unintentionally leading people astray.