Quote Originally Posted by North40 View Post
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.