Kilt Blog

The first and only time I wore my Stillwater Economy into town was a disaster. My lovely wife has repaired the poor kilt, and it is wearable again.

On the same day my puppy was vomiting to and from the vet, it happened. Everything seemed fine, but when I stopped at the pet-store for more kibble…

I looked down to put my wallet back into my sporran, a Buzz Kidder Country Sporran which I purchased from USA Kilts when I bought my Casual Kilt from them. I was wearing it with the chain that was included, having disliked the sporran hangers I ordered at the same time. My kilt’s outer apron was half balled up with threads sticking everywhere!

I did not have a camera at the time, nor would I have stopped to take a picture of the horror I saw inflicted upon the poor kilt. I thought it was already far too late. The apron balled up because over a dozen threads of tartan had been snagged and pulled by a little jump ring on the sporran chain. This ring connected the chain to a clip. I have heard of sporran chains slowly wearing a kilt before, but this was quite different.

I opened the jump ring and after ten minutes I had the kilt back to looking like a kilt. Still, three threads could not be massaged back into the weave, they broke somewhere inside the fabric. My wife, crafty as she is, managed to pull the loose strings to the inside of the apron, then tie and cut them off. Now it looks OK from the outside.

That little jump ring…. I still can not believe that anyone would have thought this was a good idea, and a kiltmaker should have known better. Placing a ring with a sharp tooth designed to snag things next to a piece of twill tartan, with some weight pressing it down as it moves back and forth?! At least this didn’t ruin an expensive kilt or an heirloom, though I suppose for someone else it easily could have.

I will order a sporran strap soon. Unfortunately I can’t wear my sporran (with that damned chain) at the moment, which means I can only wear my utilikilts into town until a strap arrives.

So, its been far too long since I last posted. I do have a good excuse. A couple of weeks ago I took my puppy to the vet and he puked 7 times on the way there and back. That same night I caught whatever he had and spent over a week sick with it.

Well, now I am better and so I am catching up. The day I first got sick I had a kilt badly damaged, and that will be my next post.

I like to keep an open mind about what is a kilt. Basically, if its a man’s skirted garment with pleats in the back and an apron in the front opening to the right, I will happily call it a kilt and maybe even buy one! However, tonight I happened upon uni-kilt.com, offering a “lycra mini kilt”. It has no apron at all, rather it is pleated all around. It is made from the same stuff as stretch-pants. And, judging by the pictures on their website, they market it more towards women than men. If that doesn’t send you running to buy one, consider their other offerings: tartan lycra g-strings and bikini panties made for men who aren’t comfortable with being “traditional” under their “kilt”. I, for one, think I will pass.

As some readers may know, my wife and I are building an off-grid cabin in Northern New Mexico. Today was really the first cold day this Fall. Most people imagine New Mexico as being hot, since it is desert. But what we have is high desert, actually I’m in the world’s largest alpine valley. Winter here can be quite extreme. Today was just a tiny taste of that, about 40F and wind gusts up into the upper 20’s (mph). My black denim utilikilt was quite warm with O Marled stockings from Sock Dreams, a turtle neck and a nice wool sweater.

Recently “Modern Manners” from the Times Online in the UK ran an etiquette advice column regarding kilts. An American in California asked what tartan he might wear to a Ball with his fiance, her family having asked that he wear a kilt.

Perhaps, Philip Howard, writing for this English chain of newspapers was not the best person to ask for advice. The column basically said only a Highland Scot should ever wear the kilt! A bit like saying only a Texas Cowboy should ever wear blue jeans, in my opinion. After-all, pretend to be a cowboy in Texas and it is said, “All hat and no cattle.”

I’ve noticed that, by and large, it is non-kilt-wearing non-Scots who will tell others they may not wear the kilt. Perhaps the columnist isn’t man enough to wear it himself, so he tells others they can not, and thereby saves his fragile self-esteem? He does at least give a bit of advice that the Californian could consider Blackwatch, though at the same time berating him as a weirdo for living in California.

To more properly answer Dave Null’s question; most people would not be offended that you choose to wear their tartan because of its beauty, so long as you treat it with respect and learn a bit of its history. It may also bear mentioning here that the tradition of family tartans was started by English weavers and promoted most strongly by Queen Victoria. Still, if one feels he should not wear a tartan honoring another family, he might wear one of his district, an ancestor’s district, his former military branch, a national tartan, or one of a great many fashion tartans. Some popular possibilities could be the California tartan, Pride of Scotland, Isle of Skye, or Braveheart.

It particularly disturbs me that the advice columnist suggested it may not be appropriate even for a Highland Scot to wear the kilt outside of the Highlands. Perhaps the columnist has never heard of the popular Highland Games events held throughout the world, or pipers wearing kilts, or even of the Irish Saffron kilt whose history goes back over 100 years and was associated with Irish Nationalism.

Were this columnist’s unfortunate advice to be widely followed, the trouser tyrants would win, the kilt eventually vanishing into the pages of history.