I am probably one of a dying breed - hopefully still around for a little while but I have caught covid so - well - you never know these days.

My grandparents went through two wars and my parents one, and they kept alive skills which might well have been already lost - I know how to hatch eggs, for instance, and how to get the most from a vegetable garden and orchard.

I am Pleater not from making kilts, as that was a fairly late interest, but from English smocks, and it was not unusual for a smock to be passed down or on for many years, carefully or skilfully repaired or restored as the years passed, but with changing times it became the dress of the lower classes, the poorhouse, and the prosperous farmer or farm manager wore a woollen overcoat and topper rather than a pure white linen smock and stove pipe hat, first to market and then every day.

The author Terry Pratchett described the phenomenon of the rich being able to buy quality boots for 50 dollars and spending less than a poor person, ten dollars a year, - and having dry feet as well. The Sam Vimes philosophy of boots is quite famous now.

I am sure that the US could produce quality fabrics and garments, given time and the necessary impetus but it would be expensive and slow going to acquire the skills and the machinery.
There are people spinning and weaving high quality fabrics in the US, but it is all done by hand and their output is tiny, and it is, of course, very expensive - plus they seem to concentrate on linen and cotton rather than wool. Perhaps the right quality of sheep fleece is not available.

Anne the Pleater.