"Scots trip up on kilt style" (article)

[Phil]

These days people from the Lowlands(mainly) with little or no kilt heritage have no one to advise them with a kilt background.

As a dyed in the wool lowlander I have to take issue with Jock's continual pops at me and my ilk. Far from being the repository of all things kilted, in my experience the Highlands is almost bereft of kilt-wearers. On my many trips to various parts of the Highlands I have to report that I have seen more kilts in Edinburgh on any weekend than I have in 20 or more years visiting the Highlands.

I put this down to a number of factors, the chief among them being the general lack of well paid employment in these areas, but also the fact of availability in that, apart from perhaps Inverness and Fort William, there just aren't that many kilt shops there. Also there is not the kilt culture among the young people to the same extent, most of whom don't have the same opportunity to "kilt-up" for a rugby or football match and who, in any case, tend to look upon kilts as a bit of an anachronism, something their grandparents might have worn and definitely not "cool" or whatever the current idiom is.

Remember it was that undoubted "lowlander" Sir Walter Scott who was responsible for the re-birth of the kilt as a Scottish icon and it has been lowlanders who have nurtured and preserved the tradition ever since. There can be no other reason as to why the majority of Highland dress outfitters are concentrated in the lowlands than that is where the bulk of the customers are. I certainly experienced no lack of information and advice about the correct way to wear the kilt etc. during an upbringing in "the lowlands" and this despite having no mentors with either a military or a "highland" background.

[Jock Scot]

Actually Phil I don't think we differ by that much. Yes of course the lowlands has its proportion of kilted gentlemen such as yourself, but I think you will agree that the majority of Scotland's population live in the lowlands and that there is derth of a kilt wearing culture there and there always has been---in spite of you and Sir Walter.