Stripe/Sett

[Brian K]

What I do not like about pleating to the stripe is that it makes the kilt look "unnatural." The beauty of the tartan, in my humble opinion, is destroyed by playing "cute games" with the rear of the kilt. I don't need flashes of colour brought about by the "swish" of the kilt: the tartan speaks for itself!

Of course these are my opinions. I'll still go around wearing my boring old kilts with no wow factor.

Sandy-

I seriously doubt that there is anything about your Highland wardrobe that could accurately be described as boring, and that is not what I meant when I said I had not seen a kilt pleated to the sett that was "appealing" to me. Perhaps I chose my words poorly, but what I meant was that they did not appeal to me in the sense of saying "Wouldn't you like something just like me?" I work retail so I see many people every day and I see a lot of perfectly fine outfits that I have no interest in owning or wearing. It's not that I don't like them, just that I don't want them. Of course I also see a lot of people in outfits that are "unappealing" in EVERY sense of the word. There are times when wearing dark glasses (a blindfold?) would be nice.

As far as "unnatural" is concerned, my opinion (and that's all it is - I like this forum because at its best it's descriptive not prescriptive) is somewhat different from yours.

Most garments that are pleated - trousers, shirts (backs and sleeves) and skirts, for example, are pleated with little more in mind than how many pleats there are in a certain space and how deep those pleats will be. No complicated mathematics to determine how to lay them out to achieve a particular effect. Matt Newsome has explained, at X Marks and other places, that the earliest kilts were pleated to "no pattern" and that the current usage of pleating to stripe or to sett are innovations that came along later. In that sense any particular pleating scheme that creates or preserves a particular pattern is "unnatural."

Of the two "unnatural" options, I prefer pleating to the stripe because it is not pretending to be something it is not - as OC Richard put it - a flat piece of cloth, but it is, in fact, emphasizing (celebrating?) the pleats, which are essential to proper kilt construction. Pleating to the sett seems to me an attempt to conceal, rather than reveal, the pleats.

Your mileage may vary, but, for what it's worth, that is my humble opinion. I don't really care how someone else pleats his kilt, but that's how, and why, I'd make my choice when the time comes.

Regards,

Brian