Guidance solicited

[Canadian Vet]

I'll second this. There are some very nice weathered/muted/ancient/etc. versions of MacLeod of Harris. And I now see a MacLeod of Harris Antique tartan. That's a new one for me.

Caveat: I also must claim a bias (sept, not blood)

If you dig deep enough, the septs are blood as daughters were married out of the family into other friendly families. We Scottish type people are descended from really small pockets of population in the past.

[jsrnephdoc]

While the army tartan is handsome enough and a defensible choice for me, I’d like to shop for another kilt in more subdued tones for more frequent wear — possibly heathered greys with blue or brown, maybe a touch of orange… as someone partially red/green colorblind, I’m firmly “not the color guy” in my family.

…

It bears observing that I also gained about 30 lbs., and the last holes on my adjustment straps are holding on for dear life.

…

Anyone care to pile on? Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

Jack

I'll offer a somewhat different suggestion, based partly on your own circumstances, one of which is a desire to be kiited here in the USA rather than in Scotland. Of course, in daily life in either place, arriving kilted is a bit unusual, with the circumstances better defined in Scotland than here.

I've taken to wearing kilts to honor my parents, because my father was so fond of his own family lineage in the Highlands. But, my meager understanding of the history of tartan is that it originated NOT as a badge of family affiliation, but simply because of differing availability of vegetable dyes in the hills surrounding different villages, and the custom of tying tartan to clan can be "blamed" on the Sobieski Stuarts as much as on any fashion sense or desire of allegiance to any clan chieftain. And, the addition of symbolism in pattern or color palette is even MORE recent, and NOT really a part of "family" tartans. Indeed, it's likely more characteristic of fashion tartans designed for groups all over the world, but that ALSO includes Scotland.

For example, take "The Nursing Tartan." It was designed by or perhaps on behalf on some Glasgow and Edinburgh Scottish National Health Service nurses as a means of obtaining charitable contributions to their organization. The symbolism in its design is in the color palette, which incorporates the colors present in their uniforms. It's not at ALL reflective of your own desires, but I mention it because many tartan historians will point out that specific colors are of NO or little historical significance, but those symbolic references ARE prominent in contemporary Scottish as well as world-wide designs for fabric woven as tartan in Scotland.

My spouse is a retired American nurse, VERY proud of her own service. She has a scarf in the Nursing Tartan, and if ever she's willing to wear a ladies kilt or kilted skirt, it will be in that tartan. (I had a calf-length kilted skirt sewn for her in Robertson Ancient Hunting so that we could identify as a pair, but it's left her closet on her body only ONCE, worn with reluctance to last year's Burns Night Supper.) Unfortunately, as a "fashion" tartan, the Nursing Tartan has defined limits on its use or production. It can be woven only by Lochcarron Mills and sold ONLY by Gordon Nicolson Kiltmakers, and for the past year or two it's been simply unavailable. I think it's quite attractive, although clearly not for you:

But, let's return to YOUR need for another kilt. I'm assuming you'll be wearing it here in the US, and typically as an individual rather than as a member of some affinity group or a Pipes and Drums Corps.

My own practice is that I wear a kilt primarily when I want to look good; e.g. to celebrate an occasion of family significance or to attend an event where people are expected to care about what they're wearing. For me, one such example is the concerts by the local symphony orchestra. Even in an audience of more than 1,000 people, I'm typically the only person so attired, but all by itself that starts conversations in the lobby, with almost always favorable questions from other curious attendees. I'm almost 80, and I'm pretty certain that the fairly frequent photos of me paired with attractive ladies decades younger than I would NEVER have happened were I not kilted. And, that curiosity often generates many other questions, rarely "what clan," far more often about the sporran, or the badges and pins, or about my sgian dubh— that often about my humorous substitute for the little knife that doesn't trigger metal detectors or scowls from weapons inspectors—it's in my XMarks Avatar, and almost appropriate because not so long ago in geologic time similar bipedal predators ruled the roost both in Scotland and in paleontologist Jack Horner's stomping grounds of Montana. It's actually a ball point pen, acquired from Montana State University's Paleontology Museum gift shop).

So, IF you wear a kilt in public you're likely to be peppered with questions as well, and sometimes the questioner will want to learn a great deal. So, I come prepared to expound a little about my limited knowledge of tartan and kilt history as well as their contemporary place in attire both in Scotland and here in the US.

Two years ago, when My sister, son, and I visited Scotland, I was a bit surprised to discover the obvious popularity of what I call "grayscale" tartans, which I'm told likely ARE so popular because they're typically NOT "family" tartans but rather "fashion" tartans. I thought that at least some of them were quite attractive. And THAT somehow led me to the discovery of the "designed in the USA" "LUNAR" tartan, perhaps designed by Pendleton Woolen Mills (or perhaps not—I'm unqualified to weigh in on that controversy).

For someone wearing a kilt in the USA and anticipating a whole range of questions about tartan and kilts, doing so offers me a chance to comment on many things, including one recent part of AMERICAN history which reflects the best of our accomplishments, namely the hugely successful Apollo Moon landings and the "one giant leap for mankind."

As originally designed the Lunar Tartan's color palette included black, gray, and one narrow red stripe, and one broad brown stripe. That last drew the ire of American planetary geologist and professor Barbara Tewksbury (Hamilton College, upstate NY), who happens also to be one of the USA's premier kiltmakers. Given her day job, she was triggered by that brown stripe in the symbolic color palette, because, after all, "there's no brown on the moon." Apparently she accepted the narrow red stripe as symbolic of the rocket flame that enabled controlled conquering of earth's gravity; I've wondered about that but haven't had the courage to ask her, because I've BEEN to Cape Canaveral for a shuttle launch, and that flame was YELLOW (and as bright as the sun), not red. My guess it's just because red is just not so "loud McLeod" intrusive as yellow would be.

But, she did have a role in the original color palette being modified to eliminate that brown stripe, resulting in THIS:

At the moment, I think the tartan is not available, but my understanding is that it's not restricted, either by its STA registration or by fashion trademarking. Professor Tewksbury has sewn kilts from it for NASA astronauts and their families, for NASA administrators, and even one for ME, who has no qualifications for wearing it other than pride in what we Americans CAN accomplish and a love of story-telling.

And, there's even one MORE symbolic wrinkle in the fabric's history. The most recent weaving, done for USA Kilts by Lochcarron Mills, was done using "marled" (multi-colored) yarns favored by USA Kilts's proprietor. Professor Tewksbury had more forgiving quarrels with that as well, because marled yarns tend to diffuse the borders between adjacent stripes, and on the moon, where there is no atmosphere to diffract light, the borders between light and shadow are RAZOR sharp.

Now, I'll admit that the questions I'm asked about what I'm wearing almost never are so wide-ranging, but it HAS happened. For example, back when I was living in Bozeman, MT, the symphony did a concert featuring the movie music of John Williams. Attendees arrived to an opportunity have photos taken with C3PO or Chewbacca (but not R2D2), taken by a Montana State undergraduate student. He asked me many questions about my Robertson Hunting (weathered) kilt and others I owned. When I told him that I was having a kilt made by a geologist in the "Lunar" tartan, his IMMEDIATE response was "wow! Barbara Tewksbury is making a kilt for YOU???"

Long story short: wearing a kilt to a public gathering is likely to give you an opportunity to expand on a VERY wide range of topics, almost always to approval from your questioners.

[OC Richard]

There are some very nice weathered/muted/ancient/etc. versions of MacLeod of Harris. And I now see a MacLeod of Harris Antique tartan.

It's interesting nomenclature, "antique".

I looked it up, it's Lochcarron's subdued palette of MacLeod for their lambswool scarves and blankets.

https://www.lochcarron.co.uk/tartan-...harris_antique

As far as I know there was only one MacLeod tartan, the one now called "MacLeod of Harris".

The Setts Of The Scottish Tartans (sorry Peter) says this:

This design appears in early collections and was recorded by Logan (1831) and Smibert (1850) yet according to the Smiths (1850) the correct tartan of the MacLeods was MacKenzie.

Logan was aware of this widely held opinion but deplored it.

It strikes me as bizarre that after the Allen Brothers produced their own crude, untartanlike, garish, and obviously self-designed "MacLeod" tartan it would be accepted on equal footing with the traditional MacLeod tartan.

Even more bizarre is that the traditional tartan would be retroactively confined to a single island, and the fake one given its own island, as if it had a claim of authenticity.