How to buy a kilt - the way it used to be done

[Troglodyte]

Although this film from the 1950s makes the kilt-buying process seem archaic, and a far cry from current trends of buying everything online with some suppliers promising same-day delivery, it serves to show what we have lost in the past 30 years or so. This kind of service has steadily died away over the past few decades.

What is seen in the film is no longer possible - there is now no native wool grown and processed commercially in Scotland. The nearest wool processing is south of the border in England, and a huge proportion of the fleeces sheared each year (and excellent quality it is too) costs more to shear than the fleece is worth, and it goes straight to land-fill.

At the same time, wool producers in the UK are importing fleeces from Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, with all the added cost of transport that entails, and the buying public make their purchases based on price. But you get what you pay for.

There are far too many people who hanker after Highland dress and other traditional Scottish items, but prefer to spend their money on artificial fibre items (PV kilts etc) and those things made and bought on cost rather than on quality. It is not that the Scottish-made items are obsolete - far from it - it is that there are cheaper, foreign-made copies.

Even a popular favourite like Marton Mills is an English company that weaves tartan (of a very high quality, like all their fabrics) in the weaving heartlands of Yorkshire, and Strathmore's cloth is a similar 'English' product that is woven nearby, which goes to show that Scots themselves are equally responsible for the demise of their domestic production.

Consequently, most of the age-old Scottish crafts are endangered, and are considered as in a critical position by the government - when the current artisans cease production, they will be gone for ever. So it is good that we can at least see from films like this one how it once was (and some of us fortunate enough to have experienced), and what it is we are losing.