Okay...there's a new crop of Stillwaters available and I'm once again seeing a couple posts from members who are automatically thinking about how to shorten them from the standard 24 inch length. I was asking this question myself a couple of years ago when I first got into this rabble but I realized that I was just trying to wear them too low and once I hiked them up they fit fine and felt better. Now I'm somewhere between 5' 10" and 5' 11" (depending on whether or not I'm standing up straight) so I figure that that's about average though I've seen posts by guys in the six-foot-plus group who say that theirs fit just fine.

I realize that everybody's body is not only sized differently but proportioned differently as well. We make the generalization that one should measure at the navel but is everybody's navel positioned in the same place relative to his "natural waist"? I have to think that that's not possible. Length of the thigh bone, size of the "buttock-ial" region, weight distribution...there are a lot more variables involved than just waist, hips and length, eh?

I have heard that there's more engineering involved in making a brassiere than there is in making a suspension bridge...and I seem to recall Steve of Freedom Kilts saying that kiltmaking tests even his engineering background. It seems to me that since we have so many members now we could create a pretty good data base of the physiometrics of all of our kilties and maybe figure out any other significant dimensions or proportions that should be included when one is ordering a kilt long-distance. I'd certainly be interested in hearing from any of our kiltmakers about some anomaly that they've encountered that threw them a curve in the process of making a garment.

And I hope that the guys that are getting the 24 inch lengths are wearing them high enough and aren't leaning forward to look and see if it's too long...if you lean forward, it will look too long...stand up straight and look in a mirror or get someone to spot you and tell you how it looks.

I guess that Douglas Adams postulated that the answer to everything was "42"...I suppose that in off-the-rack kilts it's "24".

Best

AA