Are there any kilt makers in the UK which stand above others in quality?

[North40]

I've been researching shops in the UK where I can get fitted for a quality, hand-made kilt in my family's tartan for a few months now. The first shops I found were of the more common mentions like MacGregor and MacDuff, Slanj, Kinloch Anderson, Lochcarron, Stewart Christie, and Crawford & Son just to name a few. However what has struck me while looking at them was the difference in price between all of their hand-made kilt offerings. Some shops list them for $500-$700 USD while others have a much heftier price closer towards $900-$1300 USD (MacGregor and MacDuff/Kinloch Anderson).

Does the price difference between them have more to do with the brand name than it does with the actual kilt construction quality?
Pardon my potential ignorance with some of the questions I may ask in the thread.

[Father Bill]

I can't answer your query, but I will say "no apology necessary". We all come here to learn.

[figheadair]

All those you named are retailers that have their own kiltmakers, or subcontract the work and are in effect middle-men. Better by far to go to the actual kiltmaker. I use Cathy Hope (Braw Kilts), her work is first class.

[North40]

All those you named are retailers that have their own kiltmakers, or subcontract the work and are in effect middle-men. Better by far to go to the actual kiltmaker. I use Cathy Hope (Braw Kilts), her work is first class.

Interesting, I appreciate the clarification for that.

I've seen the maker "Braw Kilts" mentioned once or twice before this in recent forum posts and the reception about their work is usually good. The prices for their kilts seem much more manageable than the others and at-least, from what you and one other person have said, the work is fully worth the cost. It seems like a really good deal.

They look to be a much smaller scale business than the ones I originally listed. Is it safe to say that the person measuring you will also be the one making your kilt?

And for my last question: Do you know if their kilts are primarily hand sewn? It mentions "hand sewn garments" on their website, but I would like to make 100% sure I am understanding that correctly.

[figheadair]

Interesting, I appreciate the clarification for that.

I've seen the maker "Braw Kilts" mentioned once or twice before this in recent forum posts and the reception about their work is usually good. The prices for their kilts seem much more manageable than the others and at-least, from what you and one other person have said, the work is fully worth the cost. It seems like a really good deal.

They look to be a much smaller scale business than the ones I originally listed. Is it safe to say that the person measuring you will also be the one making your kilt?

And for my last question: Do you know if their kilts are primarily hand sewn? It mentions "hand sewn garments" on their website, but I would like to make 100% sure I am understanding that correctly.

Braw Kilts is a two person business, Cathy is the kiltmaker, her son does their social media etc.

Yes, their kilts are 100% handsewn. My kilt from Cathy.

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[North40]

I appreciate all of the advice and recommendations that people in this thread have given me.

Braw Kilts is a two person business, Cathy is the kiltmaker, her son does their social media etc.

Yes, their kilts are 100% handsewn. My kilt from Cathy.

357750307_739532951509038_7306529298413912367_n.jpg 362253629_746364397492560_1401602922176677810_n.jpg

Nice. Whenever I'm able to make the trip to Scotland, and specifically the area where Braw Kilts is located at, I'll go and get a kilt from them. Their work and business seems lovely.

I've had two kilts made by a Glasgow company called St. Kilda Kilts

That's actually where I'm looking at getting the argyll jacket & vest for my kilt made. They seem to have a rather good reputation for their jackets and the selection of tweed they have looks good as well.
Were you able to go inside to their store and get fitted for things or is it purely an online-ordering storefront? I haven't been able to find muc

As for USA Kilts, they seem like a great business manned by great people. I saw quite a few of their videos regarding advice for kilt buying and wearing etiquette when I was first going down the rabbit hole and they were really helpful with learning about the two different thought trains behind wearing the kilt.

If you go to Scotland, a visit to Lochcarron's mill in Selkirk (Scottish Borders) is VERY interesting

And I'll definitely keep this in mind when planning the trip eventually. Thank you for the recommendations once again.

[jsrnephdoc]

I've been researching shops in the UK where I can get fitted for a quality, hand-made kilt in my family's tartan for a few months now. The first shops I found were of the more common mentions like MacGregor and MacDuff, Slanj, Kinloch Anderson, Lochcarron, Stewart Christie, and Crawford & Son just to name a few. However what has struck me while looking at them was the difference in price between all of their hand-made kilt offerings. Some shops list them for $500-$700 USD while others have a much heftier price closer towards $900-$1300 USD (MacGregor and MacDuff/Kinloch Anderson).

Does the price difference between them have more to do with the brand name than it does with the actual kilt construction quality?
Pardon my potential ignorance with some of the questions I may ask in the thread.

First, you can get a very nice kilt from USA kilts. There are other kilt makers in the USA who make highest quality garments, but they may have VERY long waiting times. Although online measurement work pretty well (which is all that's been available to me since I left California), if you have a chance to VISIT someone like Gordon Nicolson or Kinloch Anderson in Edinburgh, or Houston Kiltmakers (in Glasgow, I think) you can have tailored measurements taken. I've had two kilts made by a Glasgow company called St. Kilda Kilts, and I think they're both very nice as well. And, of course, there's USA Kilts in Pennsylvania. They use sewing machines, but they make excellent products, and they LOVE what they do (watch one of their first Friday every month 2 hr YouTube open mike videos and you'll see what I mean).

Oh, I should mention that most of the kilt shops will have all available tartans listed on their websites, but they typically don't maintain INVENTORY of cloth, so your wait for a kilt may include waiting until the next time the mill weaves your tartan, and that could be months. If you go to Scotland, a visit to Lochcarron's mill in Selkirk (Scottish Borders) is VERY interesting. They make fabric for the Royal Family as well as for us. Kinloch Anderson makes garments from that fabric for the Royals, and THAT probably figures into what they charge people like us.

[kilted2000]

If you want a hand sewn kilt then consider forum member and sponsor Barbera Tewksbury. She literally wrote the book on kiltmaking. I have one of hers and its excellent.

[OC Richard]

You can get a very nice kilt from USA kilts.

I've had two kilts made by a Glasgow company called St. Kilda Kilts, and I think they're both very nice as well.

I've been told that the two biggest USA kilt places, USA Kilts and J. Higgins, machine sew the pleats even on their top-of-the-line kilts.

There are no visible stitches, and you have to look really close to see that they're not hand-stitched.

The method is to machine-sew each pleat of the reverse side, then flip it over.

About St Kilda Kilts, it's one of the subsidiary firms of St Kilda Holdings Ltd.

They're a Glasgow umbrella firm under which are

-Gaelic Themes Ltd

-St Kilda Kilts (AKA St Kilda Store)

-R G Hardie & Co

-Peter Henderson

Gaelic Themes Ltd is their Highland outfitter branch, they make (or have made for them) kilts, kilt jackets, sporrans, hose, etc. From time to time when a firm goes out of business Gaelic Themes acquires them, for example in 2005 they acquired Carrick Jewellery. https://gaelicthemes.com/

St Kilda Kilts (or St Kilda Store) is their online retail shop. They used to have a brick & mortar shop, now closed, near St George's Cross in Glasgow (the Underground station). https://stkildastore.com/?gad_source...hoCa9YQAvD_BwE

As far as I know the Gaelic Themes/St Kilda kilts, like those of USA Kilts and J. Higgins, are all machine sewn. The ones I've seen are, at least.

RG Hardie and Peter Henderson are former pipemaking firms which went out of business years ago. St Kilda Holdings acquired the rights to revive their firm names, which are used for St Kilda Holdings' pipemaking branch. https://rghardiebagpipes.com/

[jsrnephdoc]

I've been told that the two biggest USA kilt places, USA Kilts and J. Higgins, machine sew the pleats even on their top-of-the-line kilts.

There are no visible stitches, and you have to look really close to see that they're not hand-stitched.

The method is to machine-sew each pleat of the reverse side, then flip it over.

About St Kilda Kilts, it's one of the subsidiary firms of St Kilda Holdings Ltd.

They're a Glasgow umbrella firm under which are

-Gaelic Themes Ltd

-St Kilda Kilts (AKA St Kilda Store)

-R G Hardie & Co

-Peter Henderson

Gaelic Themes Ltd is their Highland outfitter branch, they make (or have made for them) kilts, kilt jackets, sporrans, hose, etc. From time to time when a firm goes out of business Gaelic Themes acquires them, for example in 2005 they acquired Carrick Jewellery. https://gaelicthemes.com/

St Kilda Kilts (or St Kilda Store) is their online retail shop. They used to have a brick & mortar shop, now closed, near St George's Cross in Glasgow (the Underground station). https://stkildastore.com/?gad_source...hoCa9YQAvD_BwE

As far as I know the Gaelic Themes/St Kilda kilts, like those of USA Kilts and J. Higgins, are all machine sewn. The ones I've seen are, at least.

RG Hardie and Peter Henderson are former pipemaking firms which went out of business years ago. St Kilda Holdings acquired the rights to revive their firm names, which are used for St Kilda Holdings' pipemaking branch. https://rghardiebagpipes.com/

Thanks for the clarifications. I knew NONE of that, except that my kilts (I have two) from St. Kilda contain a label inside that says "Gaelic Themes," and that they do not have an open-to-the-public shop.

However, I'd like to add an endorsement to their ethics.

My entry into wearing tartan was early in life, because my Dad was SO proud of his heritage. He was a devout Episcopalian priest, but had he been permitted to wear a kilt instead of a chasuble to celebrate the Holy Eucharist, I think he would have done so. So, we three kids had tartan ties and crests on our blazer jackets by the time we were 5. Only late in life were my parents able to afford trips to Pitlochry for clan gatherings, but when they could, they certainly DID. I played the pipes (badly), in my college's Pipes and Drums Corps, wearing my sister's Robertson Red kilt (which she tells me now I never returned to her).

My Dad left us well more than a decade before my mom, after which his highland wear languished in his closet until HER death. Both parents had pipers at their requiems and at their adjacent gravesites, and my mom went to rest in her Robertson Red regalia (but dressed by the undertaker with the pleats IN FRONT).

My Dad's kilts were WAY too large for me, so eventually they went to a properly large nephew, but I inherited his Argyll and Prince Charlie jackets, and about a decade later found a wonderful seamstress in Santa Rosa, CA (where we lived) who was able to whittle them both to my diminutive but corpulent frame, after which I went to Wm Glenn & Son in SF (very nice shop, by the way, just off Union Square), and purchased my very first personally selected kilt. At the time I was amazed by the sheer number of "Robertson" tartans. Fabric weight and mill variations were totally beyond me, as was the tartan registry. But, I still got a quite nice kilt, in Robertson Hunting (Modern), from which mill or maker I no longer have the foggiest notion. But, aside from a few weddings and concerts and formal dinners at medical meetings, my "stuff" rested in my closet most of the time until consumed by the Sonoma County "Tubbs" fire, along with everything else I owned, on October 8, 2017.

That "hit" made me think I'd never be kilted again, but within the next year, my older son (anonymously at first) began to make little trinkets appear at our fire-refuge doorstep just south of Santa Rosa (a clan history tome, a dress sporran), and then, shortly after we moved to Montana, a barathea kilt jacket from Kinloch Anderson, followed shortly by a Robertson ANCIENT hunting kilt from USA Kilts. And his generosity has triggered the primary interests of my retirement—Scottish history and Celtic clothing.

My son was adopted at birth, and his ethnicity is decidedly different from mine, but his fascination with Scotland's military history and language dramatically surpasses my own. Often, I don't know even what CONTINENT he's on. A few years back when he came to visit he greeted me at the Missoula Airport in a pair of Trews in Robertson Red (Dark) that came from St. Kilda (and House of Edgar, I think), and I lOVED that tartan. I had a kilt made from it by USA Kilts, and I wear it frequently.

In the context of obtaining that kilt, I came to know a bit about one of the company's principals, who is also a Glasgow University history professor and published author. He always responds to my emails in ways that enhance my own knowledge.

When we visited Scotland in the Summer of 2023, we toured Lochcarron Mills, where I discovered their new "Robertson Hunting, Weathered" tartan (now in my favorite kilt, made for me by St. Kilda. BUT when St. Kilda ordered the fabric from Lochcarron, the folks there did a BIG TIME "oops" and substituted their "Robertson Red, Weathered" cloth. The St. Kilda kiltmakers dutifully made it up into an 8 yd kilt; imagine my surprise when I opened the package only to discover light green and almost-pink instead of deep greens and browns. I emailed my friend at St. Kilda, who investigated immediately and discovered the error at Lochcarron. His response: he GIFTED me that kilt, admittedly one I never would have purchased knowingly, but still a carefully constructed 8 yd Strome cloth garment that many would be proud of, AND arranged for a new kilt in the fabric I'd originally chosen to be made for me at no additional cost.

As for the machine stitching of the pleats in St. Kilda's and USA Kilts's "premier" garments is concerned, I think what's most important is that almost no one can tell the difference when looking at the wearer. USA Kilts also make kilts using identical fabric but "top-stitching" the pleats, which IS detectable to the trained eye, but it's much easier to sew, and so USA Kilts sells them for a considerably lower price. There is a kiltmaker on YouTube who "disses" USA Kilts's products, but people EXTRAORDINARILY highly regarded in this business dismiss his complaints as misleading and erroneous. And, although USA Kilts does not make completely hand-sewn garments, their hearts are DECIDEDLY in the right place, as anyone who tunes in first Friday every month to their live You Tube sessions will learn quickly. And, you're likely to find a Principal from Lochcarron or House of Edgar, or Barb Tewksbury, or even the Tartan Authority interviewed during those light-hearted productions.