On the ground floor of something big?

[Martin S]

I have just spent a week with a crowd of kilted men from Scotland and other countries. Everyone present (friends, spouses) was used to seeing men in kilts.
And yet -- several times, the kilts were referred to as SKIRTS !!!

If we think mugs will become a common sight, then we will have to accept that they are skirts, like it or not.
Martin,
in Grenoble, France

[Kilted KT]

Even at 10,000 a year, it will be a long time before they are seen more than once in a blue moon. ( except for the ones we have!!)

after thinking about it for a good while...let the panted masses squirm in their uncormfortable prison clothing and wear your kilt proudly!

[Tim Walker]

I'd suggest that possibly due to modern communications and the media, the whole process is moving muh faster than we realise.

I say this because within the last five years I talked about this very subject to a kilted chum, and then we agreed that such a kilted of male dressing would not happen in our life times. However since then we have both changed our minds: why?

Because no longer do people look at one in the street etc as a curiosity-the kilt is accepted as normal.

The fact that here in the UK the kilt is depicted in the media on an almost daily basis: where a few years ago it was an oddity.

The mushrooming of kilt makers, and the makers of the so called kilts, such as Utilikilt.

The multiplicity of blogs and other electronic communications that are kilt related.

All suggestive of a caldera about to erupt.

As with as mentioned above, women and girls not wearing trousers at school/work: that too having long been a background issue, burst upon the scene about thirty years ago.

However we cannot forget the other side of the coin: and that many do associate male skirted garments, with cross dressing and homosexuality: like it or not that is a fact. As a consequence many men are still reluctant to don such garments, for fear of being accused of deviant tendencies. The humerous counterpoint being the urge of many wearers of faux kilts, to dress them up with sporrans etc, and so claim association with the masculine kilt.

James

We need a term for derivative garments, something better than "faux kilts" or "contemporary & non-traditional kilts." Any ideas?

[auld argonian]

>ENGAGE RANT MODE<

Kilts are destiny....all are destined to wear kilts!

Kilts are the future...I have seen the future and it is KILTS!

In the future, a day with out KILTS will be like a day without sunshine...and I hope that the Orange Juice people don't come after me for that...but it's okay if they do because they will NOT be wearing kilts and therefore cannot prevail!

There are two kinds of people in the world...those who wear kilts and those who WISH that they wore kilts...except maybe for the folks who have never actually SEEN a kilt and have no idea what a kilt is...but we can (and must) educate them!

Kilts will triumph!

Kilts will prevail!

The world's economy will shift and wool bearing sheeps will cover the land! Sheep rearing, wool harvesting and weaving will replace information technology, finance and even the petroleum industry...because who needs to go anywhere if they don't have a really nice kilt to wear!

A man will be judged not by the amount of money he has but by the number of kilts that he owns.....which, I guess, makes Hamish the Emperor of the Earth...all hail Hamish!

Kilts will be counterfeited instead of currency!

...and mankind will finally take the great leap into Outer Space not to seek out new civilizations or to discover strange new worlds or boldly go where no man has gone before but to find planets where they can get everyone to wear kilts...let's hope that they have a reasonable number of legs, though...having to buy that many kilt hose might just turn off a planet where the inhabitants have twelve or thirteen legs..."...let's see...$500 for the kilt and $6,734 for the kilt hose."

So I want you to all go to the window and throw it open and yell as loud as you can, " I'm wearing a kilt and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

...ooops...wrong movie.....


Best

AA

[Southern Breeze]

[NewKilt]

I have just spent a week with a crowd of kilted men from Scotland and other countries. Everyone present (friends, spouses) was used to seeing men in kilts.
And yet -- several times, the kilts were referred to as SKIRTS !!!

If we think mugs will become a common sight, then we will have to accept that they are skirts, like it or not.
Martin,
in Grenoble, France

I've always considered a kilt to be a type of man's skirt, and have had two women refer to my kilts as skirts (intending it as a compliment). I'm not bothered by it being called a skirt. That, however can be a major problem for many men because they have been programmed to think of a skirt as a garment only worn by women.

Darrell

[James]

A problem that I think we must face is what we are talking about?

For on the one hand there are some talking about the traditional kilt, with its strong highland connection: yet on the other we are linking it with such garments as the Ultilikilt, where to be blunt the only real connection is that they are both male skirts.

Now let me be quite clear, for many good reasons such as comfort and practicality I support the idea of men wearing such garments, whatever they might be called. However I'm entirely opposed to such things as cross dressing, that is a man or woman false flagging to appear as the gender which is not theirs. Though if a man chooses to wear a skirt or dress as a man, or a woman trousers as a woman: that is fine by me, their rightful choice.

However this brings me back to what I see as a problem, where we are trying to back two horses in different races: one race is the support of and promotion of the traditional kilt-that is the wear of the highlander, though it has attained wider acceptance as Scottish male attire.

The other race is in respect of such garments as the Utilikilt, which really has no connection with Scotland, a point that I think was made by its creator. Here to my eyes at least, attempts to give such garments credence by importing some sort of Scottish connection, maybe adding a sporran lor wearing a skean dhu, are somewhat ludicrous.

Further they diminish both efforts to support the traditional kilt, and the efforts to develop such garments themselves as sensible male attire.

So I would suggest as mentioned in an earlier post by another, that we need to clarify our own position: and see the two types of garment as being entirely different in origin, and the rationale for wearing them. Certainly I know that if I turned up at a clan event wearing a Utilikilt and tried to claim that it had some connection to such a highland occasion, I'd be laughed out of town. [Though a visitor from say America making a similar mistake, would hopefully be treated in a more mannerly fashion-well to their face at least.]

Having made that point-in respect of the growth of popularity of the kilt: recently I saw one of the cheaper kilt variants in a shop window in Bath. Secondly, I at present live in North London: and a men's wear shop which would often have a kilt in the window, has all of a sudden turned into the centre for highland dress: which suggests that there is a developing market for such garments in the area.

To move a step further, the media almost daily shows pictures of kilted men, highland wear shops and makers are proliferating. Wales and Cornwall, locations to which the kilt was to recently entirely alien are now sprouting their own home grown wearers. I myself no longer attract any attention when wearing my kilt. All suggestive of a bubble building up which would only take some slight stimulus to explode upon the scene.

I hope I've not trampled on too many toes.

James

[pbpersson]

I'm not bothered by it being called a skirt.

Well.....a rose by any other name is still a rose. I went out for yet ANOTHER walk and I hope I don't do any more walking tomorrow because my feet have just about had it.

I was walking on the sidewalk by a restaurant and a women in a car let out a long shreik and then yelled, "OH MY GOD, THAT IS SO HOT!!!" as they were driving by.....and I don't think they were talking about the weather.

Then I was across the street on the sidewalk in front of a shopping center. A pickup truck was trying to turn off the street into the parking lot behind me so I ran across the parking lot entrance so they could get in there. Apparently with their headlights on my butt with my pleats flying as I ran they knew something was up so they drove beside me for a while, watching me walk and wondering what in the world is that man wearing????

Anyway, when I got it home, took it off, and looked at the back....yes, it's a large pleated men's skirt and it's SO MUCH FUN! I just looked it up in the dictionary, and this is what it says for kilt:
A knee-length skirt with deep pleats

You know what? When I buy a belt or a shirt or a pair of shorts or whatever....even if it looks like what the women are wearing IF I BOUGHT IT IN THE MEN'S DEPARTMENT, THEN IT IS FOR MEN. I don't care if it looks the same. That settles it for me.

[David Dalglish]

Who Wants To Be Mainstream????????

[NewKilt]

However this brings me back to what I see as a problem, where we are trying to back two horses in different races: one race is the support of and promotion of the traditional kilt-that is the wear of the highlander, though it has attained wider acceptance as Scottish male attire.

The other race is in respect of such garments as the Utilikilt, which really has no connection with Scotland, a point that I think was made by its creator. Here to my eyes at least, attempts to give such garments credence by importing some sort of Scottish connection, maybe adding a sporran lor wearing a skean dhu, are somewhat ludicrous.

Further they diminish both efforts to support the traditional kilt, and the efforts to develop such garments themselves as sensible male attire.
James

I agree with you 100%, James. I have both traditional, made in Scotland kilts, and I also wear Utilikilts. I don't wear anything that tries to give the impression that a Utilikilt is anyway connected with the attire of the highlander. In fact, when people ask me what I'm wearing ,I refer to the Utilikilt as just that, "a Utilikilt," and tell the person that it has no connection to anything Scottish.

Darrell