Kilt Blog

Recently I received a comment asking that I cover the USPS postman who wanted to be able to wear the kilt while delivering mail. This story recently made NPR, the Boston Globe, and The Seattle Times after postal worker Dean Peterson, of Lacey, Washington State, USA, lobbied the National Association of Letter Carriers in Boston to include a “Male Unbifricated Garment” among the approved uniform choices for all male US Postal Service workers.

Dean Peterson, who wears the kilt for comfort rather than as a symbol of his heritage, spent his entire $1,800 tax rebate check mailing his proposal to fellow postmen prior to the conference. He also won supportive resolutions from postal workers guilds in both Washington state and Oregon. Unfortunately, he was unsuccessful at winning majority support for the creation and acceptance of a postal kilt due to concerns about “safety”. This despite the fact that female postal workers may wear skirts.

Mr. Peterson, also a retired Master Sargent from the US Airforce, began wearing the kilt three years ago when his wife bought him one on a holiday to Scotland. He loved it because of its comfortable and airy nature and now owns 17 different kilts. According to his letter, “Unbifurcated Garments are far more comfortable and suitable to male anatomy than trousers or shorts, because they don’t confine the legs or cramp the male genitals the way that trousers or shorts do.” His plea to fellow postmen included a sample picture of what a postal kilt might ultimately look like, which was a Utilikilts Survival model with its side pockets snapped off.

While surfing for kilt news I saw a typical newspaper article about a kilt night. “Thats nice,” I thought, but then paused as I noticed some of the towns names and they really stood out. OMFG, a kilt wearer in my wife’s home town!?!?! She’s from a small Indiana farm town, the sort of place where “da boys” wear overalls to the feed store. She was startled too, and said she never saw a man in the kilt growing up. They had 17 men in attendance, which is nice, and the newspaper did a decent job with the story too. Times have changed, and for the better in this case.

YES! A Swedish kilt! I love it!

As strange as it may seem, a workman’s kilt by the Swedish company Blaklader Workwear, has become a huge hit in Sweden and Europe selling over 5,000 kilts. It was even named product of the year by the Swedish Textile and Clothing Association. The kilt has been such a hit that the company is now introducing it in the UK. It is availible from online retailer Active Workwear , who appear to deliver worldwide, contact them via email to order outside of the UK mainland.

According to The Sunday Mail, the kilt was designed by Gothenburg university student Marcus Jahnke. It features two nail pockets, a hammer loop, and various utility pockets. It is made from 100% cotton and retails for £44.75, about $87.00 US, which is less than half the price of the Utilikilts Workman Kilt.

It looks a little odd, with pockets at the top of the apron, but I simply must get one. Just “to review it” for my blog, of course

Utilikilts were recently featured on boingboing.net because of their unique and humorous “license agreement” for customer submitted photos and emails. We all know these “agreements” which go almost universally unread. Utilikilts made theirs funny enough to want to read. It says, in part:

I grant the Utilikilts Company LLC full rights to use the entire contents of this email for any purpose whatsoever, until the end of the universe. I understand that the Utilikilts Company LLC might use the text and images enclosed in this email on their web site, in printed or online marketing materials, or as a target on the dartboard in the executive bathroom, and I am fine with that.

Boing Boing is an extremely popular blog, and has twice won the Bloggies as ‘Weblog of the Year’. The author of the post, science fiction author Cory Doctorow, also revealed that he owns and sometimes wears a Utilikilt.

Popular author, JK Rowling, is always big news. Her appearances are attended by thousands. So, when JK Rowling talks about kilts, that makes for Kilts in the News.

At the recent Pride of Britain Awards, the best selling author and Edinburgh resident saw the heroes from the Glasgow ‘bombing attack’ donning the kilt, and reportedly said “When I saw them standing there on stage I thought, ‘God I love a man in a kilt.’ I married one after all,”

In a recent interview, Rowling stated that her husband has a couple of kilts, and even answered a press question about what he wore under them!

Despite the wide variety of dress encountered in her books, only one of her characters appeared kilted. According to wikipedia, “Basil – Ministry official at the Quidditch World Cup, wears a kilt and poncho in an attempt to replicate Muggle clothing”

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.

Stltoday.com recently ran this article, and another about “American kilts”. While it is nice to see any positive media coverage about the kilt, it is a shame that they don’t mention AmeriKilts, Freedom Kilts, USA Kilts, or SportKilts at all. I will grant that Utilikilts probably has the largest market share of any US kiltmaker, however it would also be nice for them to mention that the revival of the kilt is much broader than one company.

An unusual kilt-like beach towel has been making the news. The Instakilt is a beach towel with kilt, sporran, and belt printed onto the fabric. The idea is, of course, that you wrap the towel around your self and - tada- instant kilt.

Sales have been good enough that the BBC recently ran a story on the fad.

To protest a new dress code at the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States, some male air traffic controllers have been wearing dresses and kilts. Unhappy with the restrictions on various colors of clothing and arbitrarily enforced rules, it seems that they wish to point out the ridiculous nature of the new code.

Personally, I can’t help but think the kilt will be a more effective tool in their battle with the clothing tyrants. A boy in a dress is often seen as funny or sad. A kilted protester, however, has a history against proscribed dress on his side, and may wear the kilt with pride.

(via pipinggirl)

One of the few unfortunate things about kilts is the media’s reaction to petty criminals who wear them. Somehow, a storyhardly fit for the Police Blotter section of a small-town newspaper can receive nationwide circulation… simply because the criminal wore a kilt.

Such has been the case with Chandra Schaefer and Nathan Blair of Fargo, North Dakota (USA). Not only did Mr. Blair’s alleged flashing of cars and public fornication with Ms. Schaefer make national news a few weeks ago… now Chandra Schaefer’s sentence of unsupervised probation has made CBS’s website. Not because two unnewsworthy people did some nasty, but unnewsworthy acts- rather, only because one of them happened to be wearing a kilt.

Please, if you wear a kilt, don’t make an ass-hat of yourself in it.

Saturday was the Grand Opening of a retail kilt store in the seemingly unlikely location of Manassas, Virginia (USA). The new store, The Kilted Nation, stocks Amerikilts, Utilikilts, SportKilts, and accessories, as well as other M.U.G.S. The store also offers an online shop with an inventory of kilts ready to ship.

The proprietor, Brad Hutchins, age 36, said, “This is strictly a new and American trend we are trying to build here.” This perhaps explains TKN’s line of kilts which vary considerably in design from their Scottish fore-runners. Initial response has been positive, with Brad saying he has received emails from people as far away as North Carolina wanting to make the trek to his store to buy a kilt.

To Olivia McNamara, perhaps it seemed like something from a romance novel when a kilt wearing hero saved her day then vanished into the streets.

While Ms. McNamara was on her lunch hour she was bumped by a woman in her 20’s who took her wallet and ran. “I was screaming and the next thing I knew, someone in a kilt had got my wallet back for me. Before I could thank him, he had gone,” said the 35 year-old secretary, “I wasn’t hurt, and I thank my lucky stars that I wasn’t - and that my hero wasn’t hurt either.”

This real-life kilted hero will no doubt quicken the hearts of thousands of women. Romance novels featuring kilts and the Highlands have recently become popular in the lucrative American fiction market.