Quote Originally Posted by Nanook View Post
What distinguishes the military feathers from their civilian versions in your picture? Quality, maker and ancestry. The "civilian" hackles you showed were probably made in Asia while the "Black Watch" Red Hackles are made in Britain to high standards.
The MOD placed its most recent kilt order with Asia, no doubt hopefully expecting high standards, but these days buying British is no longer automatic, the Goverment is affected by the global market too.

I found a site offering the Black Watch hackle for £0.78 http://www.blackwatchshop.co.uk/prod...products_id=29 which is a quarter of what you can expect to pay for a "civilian" hackle. I don't know if the "Black Watch Shop" has any actual official connection with the regiment or not (probably not) but it is claiming to be the real McCoy and this product has been on the catalogue since July 2004. If the regiment wished to object one would think they would have done so by now.

The history of Yankee Doodle is an interesting one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_Doodle

One of my new kilts has just arrived!