I'm not big on wearing tartans with which I have no connection (kilts only... I have no problem wearing any nice plaid shirt), but I can certainly understand the appeal of "fashion" tartans, as many of them are very appealing visually.

I'm not wild about any of the available versions of my family tartan (Maxwell), as they're all pretty garish. Consequently, I've been playing around with the tartan designer software, but have limited myself to staying within the sett of my family tartan but altering the colors.

I know some tartans are available in many versions (hunting, dress, black, etc.). Since I'm keeping the sett, I don't guess that altering the colors would cause the variations to fall into the category of fashion tartans, would it?

Very interesting thread!