Willie Duff and the Modern Kilt-Wearer: The Ramblings of a Still-Fledgeling Kiltie

[IsaacW]

I will also ramble a few thoughts (especially as a lover of the 19th century Highland attire look)...

1.) Using the MacLeay images and that period to direct modern apparel is like looking at 19th century mainland fashion and using that for your everyday Saxon wear (hmmm... I am close to doing that... nevermind). It is historic and sensibilities, fashion, etc. have changed since then; even with THCD. This said, I love this look, and I LOVE patterned hose.

2.) Reactions to you dress here in the States is far different than in the Highlands today. Here, you wear a kilt, you will be noticed and most will not have any clue whether you are wearing it "Right" or not.

3.) Your style is your style... do what you like.

More of Willie...

[Benning Boy]

Thanks, Ivonian, for such an interesting thread. You're perceptive.

I'd like to throw out what seems to me a parallel thought. Way back, when photography began to appear in magazines and other periodicals, a photographers' trick began to set fashion that we live with today. Then, furniture and floors of homes were not polished, but left dull. Photographs of the interior of houses in print looked dull and muddy. So, photographers, looking for a way to make their pics look better, hit on the idea of polishing furniture surfaces or floors to make them stand out in the photos. Typically, the homes appearing in the photos were nicer ones, just as today, and readers wanting their own homes to look as nice as those in the magazine photos learned they could polish their floors and furniture to get what they perceived to be the same "fancy" look. Thus began the furniture and floor polish industry which is still much supported to this day. (I'd cite a source, but can't, although I did read about the trick and its influence in a very old photography magazine of about 100 years ago.)

Perhaps the rumpled look was quite common once, but fashion illustrations, and pictures of "the better class" caused a trickle down effect influencing the way ordinary mortals wished to appear. What is now considered traditional dress may well be set upon an illusion. Just speculating, but it seems the development of what we call traditional highland dress parallels the improvement in published illustration and photographic techniques. What is called THCD today, seems to have only become traditional at about the time photography replaced drawing and etching in magazines, and also at about the time color photography started to become common, or after 1950, more-or-less.

Anyway, thanks for your insight.