Third Buckle/Strap

[Tobus]

I'm not doubting your experience, but please allow me to share my own. Kilts with an external left buckle are certainly the norm, but having owned and worn both styles for years, I can honestly say I do not find either one more difficult to put on than the other, and I can feel absolutely zero difference between the two when I am wearing the kilts.

So why do it?

I first started doing it as a "neat feature" of my kilts. The idea was taught to me by Bob Martin, and he himself saw it used on a kilt from the 79th New York Cameron Highlanders he examined in the Gettysburg Museum. Remember, these kilts were made by New York City dress makers, who had no training as "Scottish kilt makers." The straps they used were actually made from the same tartan cloth as the kilts. And they used an interior fastening structure for the inner apron.

So Bob started to mimic this system with the leather straps of today. And he showed it to me. It just seemed interesting for my "nineteenth century" style box pleated kilts to have a unique strap and buckle arrangement that dated to the nineteenth century, as well.

However, since using that system almost universally for some 500 kilts now, I do have to say I see some advantages to it. And the primary advantage comes when making future alterations to the kilt.

Let's say you need your kilt taken in by 2". No problem. I remove the inside strap, and the outside buckle, and sew them each back on exactly 2" from their original position. Easy-peasy.

It's not quite that clean-cut with the more usual exterior arrangement which requires a button-hole. That button-hole is a stationary feature of the kilt. You can't move the hole (not without some major retailoring of the kilt). So any alterations must work around it. What that would mean, in my above example, is that the leather strap on the inside apron would be resewn in 2" farther from the edge of the apron, which would either mean some significant overhang on the apron edge, or you'd have to rehem the apron itself.

To me, it just makes alterations easier with my method. But to each his own!

That makes perfect sense to me, Matt. The ease of alteration sounds like a good reason for a kiltmaker to prefer that method.

Is it fair to say, though, based on the history of it, that it's purely an American innovation to the kilt?

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

That makes perfect sense to me, Matt. The ease of alteration sounds like a good reason for a kiltmaker to prefer that method.

Is it fair to say, though, based on the history of it, that it's purely an American innovation to the kilt?

I rather doubt that the third strap is some form of Americanization of the kilt; All of my kilts were made for me in Scotland, some nearly fifty years ago; The oldest kilt still in my tin box is probably forty years old, has three buckles, and was made by-- wait, I'll have to go look-- Chalmers of Oban.

[Tony]

I rather doubt that the third strap is some form of Americanization of the kilt; All of my kilts were made for me in Scotland, some nearly fifty years ago; The oldest kilt still in my tin box is probably forty years old, has three buckles, and was made by-- wait, I'll have to go look-- Chalmers of Oban.

I believe you'll find Tobus was referring to the inside left strap style.

[Tobus]

I believe you'll find Tobus was referring to the inside left strap style.

Indeed, my comment there was about the internal left buckle being an American innovation, not the right hip buckle.

[Ian.MacAllan]

Indeed, my comment there was about the internal left buckle being an American innovation, not the right hip buckle.

It's not anyone's innovation, it's a resurrection by Matt Newsome.

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[Tobus]

It's not anyone's innovation, it's a resurrection by Matt Newsome.

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But it's a resurrection of an American style of kiltmaking, yes? The Scots never made them like that, from what I gather. It's an American adaptation from the construction of ladies' skirts.

Not making any value judgment, just trying to clarify.

[Ian.MacAllan]

But it's a resurrection of an American style of kiltmaking, yes? . . .

If the "kilt from the 79th New York Cameron Highlanders" which Matt mentioned is indeed the only precedent from which he took the practice then I must agree with you, Tobus. I had thought the precedent was an older Scots' kilt but I may well be mistaken about that. Thanks for raising the point.

To an American, applying the term "innovation" to a mid-19th-century event seems ridiculous, but to someone raised in a culture which still calls an 11th-century creation "the New Forest" it may well seem inevitable.

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