History of Contemporary and Non-Traditional Kilts?

[ThistleDown]

I think this thread deserves to stay around as a bit of XMtS history.

What is really new under the sun, after all? Capt Stuart Davidson of the old Scottish Tartans Museum had pockets in his kilts in the 1960s -- and I doubt he was the first to do that. Alfred Mackintosh of Mackintosh didn't like the Mackintosh tartan so always wore tweed kilt suits and that was in the 1920s. He took as his example his father's good friend, my ggg grandfather, who wore just plain wool kilts, as well as tweed and tartan with no respect for a clan sett and that was in the 1860s.

The late Jamie Scarlett, the "grand old man of tartan", wove himself a length of tartan and his wife, Meta, made him a kilt that was so light he wore it but once and then re-made it into a table cloth. Good summer idea though, if he had only doubled the weight to something like 10 oz. He also took another length of unwashed (and still lanolin-rich) plain product of his loom, made a kilt from it and wore that one rain or shine, winter or summer for years. Until it literally disintegrated around his hips. Sure shed water well.

I remember an ancient up Glen Mazeran who added a leather pocket and a slit to the left hip of a kilt he had as the perfect place for his gralloch knife. It was hidden away where none could see it and know what he did of an evening, I suppose. But we all did. I remember his leather leggings and shoes as being all one and very smelly, too -- but that's not for this thread.

Hugh Macpherson, he of the ivory and gold Henderson pipes, had his own shop make him a kilt in blue-coloured denim washed many times so he could wear it aboard ship on his cruises into the tropics. 1950s I think. He took the idea from the old jeans he saw in Colorado, he said. He didn't like it though because it stretched and became baggy in bad places.

"Contemporary" simply means current or modern or of-today. Variations on a theme. Just keep in mind, lads, that with the possible exception of MUGS (?) we're talking of Scottish Highland clothing here. It's all been tried and become part of the history that is what we wear. More ideas yet to come, some to be accepted and some not.