Tartan Jackets

[haukehaien]

What's a barrel pleat?

[Southern Breeze]

What's a barrel pleat?

I'm scrathing my head too.Enquiring minds want to know.

[Rigged]

This is the only image I could find of a barrel pleat:

http://www.dfbsales.com/html/details...l_details.html

[Hamish]

I have heard of barrel pleats before, but never seen them. However, I have always imagined them to be simple, unpressed box-pleats, rather like Rigged's illustration of curtain headings. No doubt Matt will know the answer to this one.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Hamish has it just about right. It's like you took a regular knife pleated kilt and twisted the top of it around, making almost a little "box" at the end. You leave this unpressed and it makes almost a tube running down your pleat. Soldiers would actully run a cane up them to round them out for inspection, so it's also sometimes called cane pleating.

BTW, the kilt in the bottom picture there is in the Bullman tartan, designed by Bob Martin for my friend Al Bullman. He's got the only kilt in it that I know (made by Bob Martin), and he was quite surprised to see his kilt on this guy's web site!

Matt

[Blu (Ontario)]

This is fascinating stuff. While I've previously seen the B&W photos of the 1800 kilt and jacket, the photos below it of the contemporary example really shows off the detailing. Interestingly, I showed this to my wife last night and her reaction was... "I don't like that...!"

My eyes see too much tartan... and this is probably a result of exposure to some of the expert opinion here at Xmarks. I think our eyes get so used to seeing things in a particular form and accepting them, that there is a natural tendancy to look negatively upon any departure from that.

Personally, I think the form of the jacket is great. I'll bet it would look wonderful in solid colors. (My prejudice clearly at work here.) I think the form of the kilt is really nice, esp. pleated to the stripe. Very distinctive.

Does anyone on the board have one of these kilts... or consider buying one?

blu

[davedove]

My eyes see too much tartan... and this is probably a result of exposure to some of the expert opinion here at Xmarks. I think our eyes get so used to seeing things in a particular form and accepting them, that there is a natural tendancy to look negatively upon any departure from that.

I think that's our modern eyes looking at the tartans. I recall seeing some older drawings where the person seems to be wearing as much tartan as will fit on his body. So, since these are supposed to be historical reproductions, they look great.