From "Normal" to "Formal" - the kilt's place as a Highland garment

[piperdbh]

Here's my two cents' worth:
The kilt or belted plaid may have fallen out of favor as more people worked in factories with machinery that could easily entangle stray fabric. (I used to work in a sawmill, and a tooth on the blade once caught my leather glove and could have chewed my arm into pulp. Thanks be to the Lord, the glove slipped off and left my hand unharmed.) Britches would have made more sense than kilts to wear in a factory, and used far less fabric, making them cheaper to produce.

Kilts and tartan may have come back into favor in the late 1800s because of new dyes which could produce bolder colors than the old plant-based dyes. From what I've read about Victorian culture, they liked color.

The end.

[ThistleDown]

Here's my two cents' worth:
The kilt or belted plaid may have fallen out of favor as more people worked in factories with machinery that could easily entangle stray fabric. (I used to work in a sawmill, and a tooth on the blade once caught my leather glove and could have chewed my arm into pulp. Thanks be to the Lord, the glove slipped off and left my hand unharmed.) Britches would have made more sense than kilts to wear in a factory, and used far less fabric, making them cheaper to produce.

Kilts and tartan may have come back into favor in the late 1800s because of new dyes which could produce bolder colors than the old plant-based dyes. From what I've read about Victorian culture, they liked color.

The end.

There's definitely some truth in your theory, dbh. Trousers are much less likely to get caught up than yard after yard of kilt. However, there was almost no industry in the Highlands and where there was (the gunpowder works on Loch Fyne, for example) there are no records of the kilt being worn. Well, no, but there are two tales of trousers catching fire at the charcoal furnace that preceded the gunpower factory.

Industry in Scotland was pretty much located in Fife and in the Forth-to-Clyde industrial belt, with bits and pieces in Angus and up the east side of the country. I can assure you that it was hard enough on a grossly poor, Gaelic-speaking Highland family from, say, Highland Perthshire, having to go to one of those places of dirt and noise and crassness and sickness -- and rejection -- without making it even worse by having its male members kilted.

Rex